


Without Mercy

by Nosow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, POV Third Person, Past Child Abuse, Romance, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, Touch-Starved, family by choice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:35:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 51,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21755374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nosow/pseuds/Nosow
Summary: She's a crafty thief who never expected to cross paths with an aloof Mandalorian and a strange child. He's a man trying to stay faithful to his principles and deal with the feisty swindler who irritatingly intrigues him. A chance encounter brings them together, and their fates inevitably entwine as they attempt to navigate the galaxy - and each other - together.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Original Character(s), Din Djarin/Original Female Character(s), Mando/Original Character(s), Mando/Original Female Character(s), The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV) & Original Character(s), The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Original Character, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 150
Kudos: 550





	1. The Thief

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhh my name is Nosow and here I am with another fic that I just couldn't resist writing.
> 
> I am obsessed with The Mandalorian but I'm fairly new to the SW fandom, and I'm very new at writing for this fandom - this is my first SW related fic ever. Bear with me as I learn and attempt to do my very best; there will be lots of research along the way, so if I get something wrong, don't hate me! This will be a story-focused slow burn, but rest assured that the romance and smut will come.
> 
> I'll be dividing my time between this and one other fic. I'm super excited to write this, though, and I so hope that you guys enjoy. <3

_It's been so long. Oh, such a long time_  
_Since I've lived with peace and rest_  
_Now I am here, my destination_  
_guess things work for the best_  
  


_Kriff, this planet is going to kill me._

The heat is oppressive, the air so thick and humid that it hangs heavy in her lungs with each ragged inhalation. Her supple leathers cling damply to her skin, a thick layer of sweat gleaming on her forehead and neck. It beads above her lips, stings the corners of her eyes where they squint against the grains of sand that are carried on the stifling wind, kicked up by her boots. 

The pace she sets certainly doesn’t help, but though her thighs burn and her body pleads for respite, she neither halts nor slows. She can’t, not when she knows that her pursuers are close behind. 

She’d been so close to making a clean getaway when they’d spotted her on the outskirts of their camp. Their shouts of alarm had driven her into a reckless sprint, and she hadn’t dared look back to see how many followed at first. She’d managed to lose them briefly in the cresting dunes of sand, but there isn’t enough cover in this damned terrain, and she knows they’ve spotted her again on the horizon when she hears the telltale sound of blasters firing. 

She curses, losing her footing briefly as earth explodes around her, the shots hitting far too close for comfort. She rolls halfway down a dune before she finds her feet again and lets her momentum propel her faster, _faster_. When she crests the peak of the next dune, she whips her head around quickly to take stock: four of them mounted on dewbacks, thundering down the dune she’d just tumbled from. During the night, dewbacks wouldn’t have worried her; they’re sluggish then, a breeze to evade. But under the oppressive suns, they can easily keep up with her for a while. She might’ve had a chance of exhausting their endurance, had they not been built for the sand, unlike her. 

Turning forward, she grits her teeth. All she needs to do is get back to Mos Eisley and she’ll be fine. She’s so familiar with every inch of the place that she knows she’ll be able to duck out of sight somewhere, to bunker down until the men following her are gone. But there’s a vicious stitch in her side, and she’s been running for too long in the heat without water. She can feel her body beginning to tire, her steps growing too graceless, her vision blurring at the edges. 

Perhaps, for not the first time, Ashmire is in over her head. But this time might very well be the last.

Another round from the blaster; sand sprays at her feet, spiraling upwards, and she yelps, temporarily blinded. Still, she lurches forward. And when she lopes over the peak of another dune, forcing her burning eyes open, she is so relieved to see Mos Eisley that she could sob. She’s so close that she can taste it, and when the dunes taper into flat sand, her steps become a little surer, a little swifter. Her lungs don’t seem to be capable of doing much more than expanding and exhaling in shallow, stabbing motions, and she swears that her heart is beating so hard that it’s likely to burst. But the adrenaline coursing through her veins keeps her going, keeps her grounded.

And it keeps her from falling when the shot from the blaster hits her.

She is so close to the sanctuary of the spaceport town when she feels it. It brushes her shoulder, or so it feels in that moment, the impact stunning her more than the pain, driving the air sharply from her lungs. She stumbles but recovers, and then she is darting through the crowded streets of the town, her mind racing as she ducks and weaves through streets until she finds ones that are narrow and closely packed, making pursuit by dewback impossible. Though her mind screams at her to keep running, keep moving, she forces herself to slow to a brisk walk as she tugs her hood over her head. She doesn’t want to draw too much attention to the path she’s taken by barreling through crowds, and though she cannot possibly control her heaving chest, she ducks her head and tries her hardest. Her hands wrap tightly around the bulging satchel slung over her shoulder instinctively; she calls Mos Eisley her home by choice, and so she’s well aware of the scheming, thieving residents. 

She’s one of them, after all.

From behind her, there is the sound of shouted demands. She does not need to look over her shoulder to know that the men are searching for her on foot, and she ducks her head lower as she abruptly changes course, ducking down a side path. She is reluctant to call on the aid of others unless it’s absolutely necessary, but she’s running out of options and the blaster bolt she took to the shoulder is beginning to feel alarmingly hot and painful as her adrenaline ebbs. 

She needs Peli Motto.

She is stumbling by the time she manages to make her way to the repair dock run by the no-nonsense woman, and judging by the wetness sliding down her back, her shoulder is weeping blood. She loses her footing once, twice, and the third time she ends up collapsed against a ship docked there, unable to force her trembling legs to cooperate as her eyes squeeze closed.

There’s a frantic beeping, a whirring of movement, and a hand takes her by her good shoulder. Her eyes reluctantly open at that, afraid that she’s been caught, but it’s the face of Motto that she sees, with three repair droids hovering behind the stout woman. 

“…happened to you, Ash?” Motto’s voice reaches her as if from a great distance, and as if delayed. The girl's mouth opens to respond, but before she can, there’s a flicker of movement in her peripheral. Snarling, she turns her head towards it, only to find…

A child?

Its overly large ears are splayed back with uncertainty as it gazes up at her with huge, inquisitive eyes, partially concealed behind a pillar. But no, that’s not right – it’s not a pillar. It’s a leg. A sturdy, well-armored leg. Her eyes sweep up, _up_ , until she’s gazing into the face of a Mandalorian.

Maybe face isn’t the right word, she silently concedes as Motto lowers her to the ground. It’s a metallic helmet that conceals his features, the gleaming t-shaped visor turned towards her. She hasn’t seen one in years, but she’s too faint to be alarmed by the sight of a bounty hunter as she turns her gaze upon Motto’s worried face. The woman is shouting something to the scrambling droids, but instead of their robotic faces filling her vision next, it is that of the Mandalorian.

He’s kneeling beside Motto now, cape fluttering behind him as his gloved hand extends, pressing something into Motto’s palm. Her vision blurs, struggles to focus, but at last it does. It’s a cauterizer that Motto is holding, though apparently the woman hesitates for a fraction too long, because a moment later the Mandalorian is snatching it back. His hands shoot out, grabbing Ash, turning her with a strength that is sure but not ungentle. Still, she lets out a rasp of air as she settles onto her stomach.

There is a tearing of fabric at her back, a single warning zap of the cauterizer firing up, and then abruptly it’s pressed against her shoulder. She gasps, and her chest seems to falter, the air unable to expel itself from her lungs from the sheer force of the pain. She’s held there in limbo, her body rigid but held still by the firm hold of the Mandalorian, and her flesh is burning, _burning_ – 

The menacing zapping quiets. The cauterizer recedes. The pain doesn’t.

“Someone is coming.” The unfamiliar voice is smooth, controlled, a rich, even timbre slightly muffled by a modulator. “Hide her, and the child.”

She’s being hefted then, and her vision dances, spots of black peppering everything around her. A wave of nausea crests within her, dizzying and sudden, so she squeezes her eyes shut again as someone – Motto, she thinks – drags her into the cooling shadows cast by ship. Saliva pools heavily in her mouth, and she chokes on it silently, body heaving as the sound of more voices reaches her. Beside her, the strange child watches noiselessly.

“We’re looking for a girl. We’re told she came this way.” 

The modulated voice rises again, firm but no less cool. “What is it that you want with her?”

“Justice. She has wronged us, and she is ours to do with as we see fit.”

Silence. And then the same rough, unfamiliar voice rising again. “No games now, Mandalorian. Hand her over.”

She thinks she loses consciousness for a moment then, because there is only silence and darkness before the sound returns to her in a roar, blaster bolts and screaming and the frantic beeping of the droids. “Be still now,” Motto says to her, almost tenderly, and Ash complies. It’s not as if she could do anything else. 

All too soon, the sound of combat has ceased. Ash forces her eyes open, fighting another wave of nausea – but this time, she loses. She retches suddenly, violently, and her sick splatters the earth beneath the ship she and Motto are huddled beneath. Her stomach is cramping violently as she rolls onto her back, gasping, gazing up at the metallic underbelly of gray. And then abruptly a shining helmet enters her line of sight, the Mandalorian staring down at her in silence. After a moment his boot kicks out, colliding with the satchel sprawled in the dirt beside her. From within spills various gleaming parts, clanging together as they come to a rest at his toes.

He is still, silent. Until he’s not. 

“You’re a thief,” he says matter-of-factly.

In response, she rolls over and pukes on his boots.


	2. The Offer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, thank you so much for all of the kudos, bookmarks, and sweet comments <3 It's made me feel so wonderful about starting this fic, and I cannot thank you all enough!

_Take one last look at what you're leaving behind_  
_cause there's no coming back once we go_  
_We are the children of an innocent crime_  
_and its time to take down the throne_

When she wakes, Ash thinks that she might prefer death to this.

Her temples are throbbing a fierce melody in rhythm with her heart, and her shoulder is so hot and itchy that she could scream. She’s laying in a cot on her side, with scratchy blankets up to her elbows, in a room that she does not recognize. It’s sparsely furnished aside from the bed, with only a shabby desk beneath a mirror and a chair with chipping blue paint. She struggles to sit up, groaning quietly at the heaviness of her limbs, the pounding in her temples. 

She doesn’t know if it’s her groan or her shuffling, but something draws the attention of someone outside. She hears the gentle thudding of boots, and then the curtain that separates the room she’s situated in parts. There’s a mild stab of alarm in her chest, but it fades a moment later when the form of Peli Motto materializes, a tray clutched in the woman’s hands.

“Oh, _good_ , you’re awake,” Motto says, briskly shuffling over to the desk, where she places the tray. It takes only Motto’s presence for Ash to suddenly recall the events of earlier – running from the men in the dunes, bleeding as she dipped through the streets of Mos Eisley, collapsing at Motto’s feet in a delirious haze. The memory alone seems to call her exhaustion to attention, and her shoulder gives another particularly nasty throb.

_The blaster. That’s right._

“Wasn’t sure you were going to pull through that one,” Motto is saying as she busies herself with uncovering the tray. As she begins to prod and stir something on it, the smell of hot food wafts towards Ash, making her stomach cramp painfully with longing. She’s already reaching out when Motto turns to press the plates into her hands, and if someone had asked her later what was on them, she couldn’t have told them. She’s so busy inhaling every scrap and morsel, roof of her mouth be damned, that she practically chokes on it.

“Easy, easy! It’s not going anywhere.” Motto folds her arms over her chest as she leans against the door frame, the weight of her eyes heavy where they fall on Ash. The girl pretends not to notice, until at last the plates are cleared and she has no choice but to face the older woman in the room.

“Thank you,” she says, somewhat awkwardly, because she doesn’t know exactly _what_ she’s thanking Motto for. Her memories are still hazy, but deep in her bones she knows that she owes the woman a debt, likely for saving her life if the pain in her shoulder is any indication.

“Ah, well,” Motto says dismissively, turning to retrieve a cup of something steaming from the tray – the last remaining item. She presses it into Ash’s clammy hands, murmuring a brusque, “Drink up.”

Ash scrunches up her nose as she takes it, the smell of broth curling up from the lid. “My mouth is as dry as bones, and I don’t even want to imagine what my breath smells like.”

“You vomited,” Motto informs her.

“Makes sense.”

“On the Mandalorian’s feet.”

 _Mandalorian._ Ah, shit. She’d forgotten about him, but the memory springs forward eagerly now – broad and gleaming and deadly, with a strangle little creature hovering behind him for protection.

“Quite rude of me,” she replies, lamely. 

“And immediately fainted afterwards.”

“The best outcome for that situation, really.”

Motto gives an exasperated snort, but doesn’t respond as she busies herself with gathering the now-empty plates. For a while, Ash is silent, nursing her broth as she’s torn between asking Motto the question that dances on the tip of her tongue and silence. But when she opens her mouth at last, Motto cuts her off.

“He isn’t – _wasn’t_ \- here for you. Far as I’ve heard, you don’t have a bounty. Yet.”

Relief courses through her at that, sudden and welcome. But it changes nothing. She still needs to leave, now.

The broth is near enough to empty when she forces herself to her feet, trying to ignore the dangerous swoop of her stomach. Motto makes a sharp noise that Ash ignores as she places the mug on the table, glancing around the room once more. Her satchel of stolen goods is slung over the chair, and her boots have been tossed in the corner from where they were, presumably, hastily removed. 

“How’s the shoulder look?” Ash asks as she crouches to pull the boots on, because she can feel the thick padding of medical cloth beneath her shirt, and she assumes Motto was the one to wrap it. There's a long enough pause for her to straighten, to look in the mirror above the table. Her light hair is pulled into a messy knot at the nape of her neck, revealing high, sweeping cheekbones and onyx eyes that sit above a straight nose and full lips. Her skin, normally a healthy pale pallor with pink-tinged cheeks, looks washed out in the wake of her injury. 

“Not bad. You’ll have a nasty scar, but if you keep it clean and dry, there shouldn’t be any risk of infection. Look, Ash…are you sure you don’t want to stay here for a while? You can pay me back in labor, once you’re better, and – “

“The Mandalorian still here?”

A pregnant pause. Then, “Yes, but I told you he’s not here for – “

“I’m good. Thanks, though.” She slings her pack over her shoulder, pauses just long enough to gaze into Motto’s eyes. “I owe you one. I’ll be back, I promise.”

And then she’s ducking through the curtain before Motto can say anything else.

With every corner she turns in the compound, Ash worries that she’ll run into him. She’s not sure why it fills her with so much trepidation; maybe because she thinks he withheld the truth from Motto, and he’s there for her, after all. She’s not a low-profile thief by any means, and she wouldn’t be surprised if someone had put out a puck for her. And she’s not exactly in peak physical condition at the moment; had it been anyone else, she’d have been certain that she could have out-smarted them, even injured. But a Mandalorian?

She’s not a fool.

She’s almost made it out of the compound when she hears it, a slight shuffling behind her that has her whirling, reaching instinctively for a blade that’s no longer at her waist. She grits her teeth in frustration, but when the figure of the child steps into the flickering light of the halls, she experiences a moment of intense recollection. This time, however, it’s alone, simply gazing up at her with those massive round eyes. She curses silently, because she knows that the Mandalorian must not be far behind. But something keeps her there, until at last she sighs as she drops to her knees, rummaging in her bag.

From within she withdraws a round knob that once belonged to the control panel of a ship, crudely broken off but lacking any sharp edges. Within, something has come loose and rattles noisily as she holds it out to the youngling. It tilts its head, gazes at her for a moment, and then it reaches out green stubby fingers to enclose the orb within. It gives the sphere a rattle once, twice, cooing in delight. And when it looks up again, Ash is gone.

She makes it out of Motto’s with ease after that, and edges her way through Mos Eisely, moving as fast as her wound allows her. It still stings, but it is an ache that she weathers without complaint, until at last she’s fumbling to unlock the door of the quaint establishment that she rents in the dingy dredges of the city, falling inside with a grateful hum.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

It’s only half a day later when Ash drags herself to the cantina, exhausted still but determined to do what she must.

It’s full of patrons that night, each of them absorbed in their own vices, the music almost loud enough to drown out the roar of laughter, the purrs of proposition, the angry undertone of people just close enough to the edge that a current of danger underlies the night.

She’s dressed to catch the eye, in skin-tight leathers that accentuate her frame – but only to those who are looking. She knows how to stand out just enough to catch the eye of the appropriate clientele, namely those who are looking for the types of items from her latest haul.

She’d like nothing more to be in her bed right now, curled up with Sansil, able to safely nurse her wounds in peace. But she has a job to do, and it won’t be long until they must move again. She needs enough credits for when the time comes.

She’s so absorbed in scoping out her fellow patrons while simultaneously sipping her drink that she almost misses it – the sound of the cantina doors swinging open. But there is no way to miss the sudden silence that sweeps through the establishment, the tenseness of those around her, the lethal stillness.

She’s not stupid enough to crane her head, and it’s fortunate that she’s not, for a moment later _he_ enters her line of sight. Lacking the child now, he’s all predatory grace, his armor gleaming dimly in the light of the lanterns around him. She dips her head closer to the counter as he settles himself into a booth across from her, her silver-blonde hair falling around her face in bone-straight curtains as she attempts to not look towards him. She needs to get out of the cantina as swiftly as possible, but _too_ quickly will draw attention to her.

She forces herself to nurse the rest of her drink as slowly, conversation in the cantina resumes. And though she does not look at him, she can swear she feels his gaze on her, heavy and persistent. When she’s finally down to the dregs of her cup, she pays her tab and excuses herself, slipping out of the dimly lit establishment.

The second she’s outside, surrounded by the cool night air of Tatooine, she’s moving. She feels as if there are eyes on her immediately, and it makes her skin crawl, makes her wound ache. Her specialized, high-grip boots are practically silent against the stone beneath them as she maneuvers through the streets, taking every shortcut and back road that she recalls. And when she at last reaches her residence, she slips inside and bolts the door behind her with a weighted sigh.

_See? Nothing to worry about. You’re getting paranoid._

She’s made it roughly six steps inside, igniting lanterns along the way, when a knock sounds, heavy and demanding.

Ash freezes where she stands, arm half-raised, heart leaping into a gallop. For a moment, she debates hiding, making herself as small as possible and not answering. But when another knock sounds, more insistent, she knows that whoever is outside is aware that she is home.

She palms her favored vibroblade – which she’d found placed in her pack of goods, likely by Motto – and turns to the door. It’s flimsy, too damn _flimsy_ , and would never survive much of an assault. Cornered and exhausted, Ash makes her way to the door, her weapon poised strategically, and slowly eases it open.

Perhaps she is wrong, after all. Perhaps it is a customer, someone who followed her from the cantina to bargain, or someone who recognized her –

But no. She’s right.

It’s the Mandalorian.

He is large and imposing without even needing to say a word, his boot immediately kicking out to jam itself between the door and the frame, preventing her from shutting him out. He says nothing, simply looming there, seeming overly bulky where he positions himself. Ash takes a single step back, and then a second, the pommel of her blade grasped tightly in her fist behind her back. Though she cannot track his gaze beneath his helmet, she feels as if he is watching that hand, waiting for her to strike.

“What are you doing here?” She blurts before she can stop herself. Something about him makes the hair at her nape stand on end, makes her nerves feel as if they’re fraying. 

He doesn’t answer. He simply gazes in her direction, blocking her means of escape, making her mind reel.

“Look,” she says, “if this is about your boots, I’ll buy you another pair.”

“Buy?” He asks with a minuscule tilt of his helmet. “Or steal?”

She waves her free hand dismissively. “Semantics.”

“Is it?” He sounds so cool, so collected, that it throws her. She falters, unsure of how to answer, her usual spitfire wit unresponsive. But before she can even begin to form a response, there comes a yowling from beneath her cot, deep and angry.

“Sansil, _no_ ,” she begins, but he comes streaking out all the same, hunkering down at her side with bristled fur and flashing teeth.

The loth-cat looks fierce in his own right, all spotted fawn fur and dark eyes, glaring at the imposing Mandalorian with a ferocity that is admirable. The pair of them stare at the cat in disbelief together, before Ash scoops him into her arm one-handed, ignoring his spitting.

“I don’t know what you want,” she says, trying to maintain her grip on her blade while struggling with the fat, angry loth-cat. “But I’d rather prefer if you left.”

He does not respond immediately. And when he does, it is not with words. He steps forward – one, two, three feet. She’s backing away, baring her teeth, trapped when her back meets the wall. But then he stops and speaks.

“One of the parts I saw in your pack,” he says. “I need it.”

She laughs, the sound sudden and sharp. She can’t help it. “Excuse me? Are you asking, or demanding?”

“Which does it take?”

She snorts. “Look, I can sell it to you, I suppose. But you followed me here to my house, made me feel unsafe, and it won’t be cheap.”

“You stole it from innocent men. It’s not exactly yours to sell at an inflated price.”

“And you killed those ‘innocent men’ I stole it from. I figure we’re even there.”

Silence.

It lasts for some time, so long that Ash is beginning to grow antsy. Sansil can sense it, yowling quietly. She’s just beginning to gather her courage to ask him to leave for a second time when the Mandalorian speaks again.

“The knob the child had – you gave it to him?”

She’s caught off-guard. “Um. Yes?”

He nods, so slight it’s almost imperceptible. “Motto says you’re good at other things, as well.”

“A jack of all trades, really.”

“As in?”

She scoffs, shifting her stance to wrangle Sansil back into her grasp. “Why does it matter to you?”

No response. The silence wears on, until at last – 

“I can fly very well,” she admits. She senses it’s what he wants, to hear this. If it will make him leave her be, she’ll acquiesce. “I can repair ships. My medical skills are rudimentary, but fair. I can cook. I can fight. I can _survive._ ”

His head tilts, a movement so small and swift that she almost misses it. “And you can steal.”

“Oh, yes,” she says. It’s an understatement.

Silence, again. She’s aware suddenly of her state, the tight leathers meant for a night at the cantina, the fact that she can’t see where his eyes fall. And just when she’s beginning to contemplate her need to lash out with her knife, to try to drive him from her, his modulated voice rings out.

“I need the part. And I need a mechanic, among other things.” He pauses, just long enough to make her jumpy, before he resumes. “Motto says I can trust you.”

“Do you?” She asks, brazenly.

“Of course I don’t. You’re a common thief.”

“Thief? Absolutely. Common? Far from it. I’m insulted you’d even think that.”

Nothing.

But she can almost _feel_ him glancing around her home, taking in the threadbare curtains, the lopsided furniture, the dimming lights and dust-smattered fixtures. She bristles, and her mouth opens to deny him. 

But she stops. Thinks.

The Mandalorian is clearly capable of doing her a fair amount of damage, if not killing her outright. She’d worried that he’d been there for her, but instead he is proposing _hiring_ her. And with her past, her present, can she really afford to say no? She has an itching suspicion that there's some other reason he's asking, something she's not seeing. Why, after all, would he take a total stranger into his employ, one who's a criminal? It reeks of suspicion.

Still. It’s a massive proposition, one she is not entirely sure of. It would afford her protection against her enemies, of which she has many. Many which he doesn’t exactly need to know about, if he does not ask. 

She shifts on her feet, considering his hulking frame, his intense presence. And when she replies, she almost grins at her own proposition.

“Can Sansil come along?”

“The loth-cat?” He asks, a mild note of disbelief in his modulated voice.

“We play nice,” she lies sweetly. “I swear.”


	3. The Departure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anddd here we are with another chapter, because I apparently cannot control myself.
> 
> In the coming days, I should have an image for the story - I'm working on editing a poster/cover-type image for you guys :D
> 
> At the moment I know there's a lot of imagery and details being thrown at you guys, but fear not! I'm just setting everything up before we delve deeper into the characters. 
> 
> Also - how would you guys feel about a Mando POV? Would you rather it be all Ash, or mostly Ash with some Mando sprinkled in?

_If I leave here tomorrow_  
_Would you still remember me?_  
_For I must be traveling on, now_  
_Cause there's too many places I've got to see_

“Didn’t expect to see you back so soon.”

Motto doesn’t sound nearly surprised enough, which makes Ash speculate that the woman had known about the Mandalorian's offer. Known she'd accept it. 

Ash squints at her, one hand propped on her hip, the other wrapped around the pudgy middle of Sansil. At her feet are three bags; that’s all it takes to fit her meager belongings, including the parts she scavenged from the encampment that she hadn’t managed to hawk that morning. “Yeah,” she says at last, the word long and drawn out. “Neither did I.”

The Mandalorian is busy inspecting his ship – the very one that she’d collapsed against the day before. There’s blood and a scuff mark that she suspects is new marring the hull, likely thanks to the blaster-battle that took place while she was wounded. She’ll have to fix that. 

“Maybe it’ll be good for you,” Motto suggests. “Mos Eisley is a scummy place. You’ll be better off far away from here.”

“Well,” Ash replies, but she can’t come up with anything else. In lieu of answering further, she stoops to wind her free arm through the straps of her bags, huffing quietly at the weight when she hefts them. Sansil isn’t exactly making things easier, deadweight where he dangles in her grip, purring softly under his breath. 

“I’m serious,” Motto says, reaching out to relieve Ash of two of the bags. “You’ve got potential. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. If they do, they’ll answer to me. Mandalorian included.” 

Ash, though she does not readily admit it, is touched. Back when she’d rolled into town with only a threadbare pack and the dingy clothes on her back, Motto had taken pity on her. The no-nonsense woman had put her to work, teaching her the art of repairing ships – or at least a fair bit of it, before Ash had gotten caught up in her usual endeavors. Still, she’d made a point to touch base with Motto every few weeks, sometimes in need of a patching up, sometimes because she had nowhere to go…but more often because she simply enjoyed her company. 

Together the pair of them board the ship, where the Child is already situated, gurgling to himself where the Mandalorian has placed him in his hover pod. The stoic man hasn’t yet told Ash where she’ll be situated, so she and Motto tuck her things in a dusty corner as Sansil squirms from her arms. The loth-cat gives her an indignant sniff, apparently choosing to ignore how content he’d been being carted around, and trots off to lick himself in some remote part of the ship. 

There’s the heavy thudding of boots against metal, and then the Mandalorian is standing at the entrance to the ramp, his helmet turned in their direction. When he speaks, it’s Motto that he addresses. 

“You’re sure I can’t compensate you for this?” He asks. 

Motto snorts in response. “You can compensate me by making sure I see this girl again one day, _alive_ and healthy, Mando.” 

He doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t have to. Ash can practically hear his response in the silence: _no promises._

She’s okay with that. Promises are far too easy to break. 

“Ready?” He asks her instead. 

“Almost.” Her smile is uncommonly gentle when she turns to face Motto, though a moment later her expression sobers as she reaches, forearm-to-forearm when she and the woman clasp each other’s elbows. “Peli Motto,” Ash says seriously, dipping her head. “Thank you.”

She doesn’t need to add what for. Neither does Motto, when she replies. 

“Ashmire,” the woman responds, just as solemnly. “The pleasure was all mine.” 

Ash watches her until she’s off the ship, watches her even as the ramp begins to ascend, as the Mandalorian moves past her and the vessel roars to life. And just before the ramp closes completely, Motto calls, “And you take care of that kid, too!”

Ash glances towards the pod, only to see that the Child has climbed down and has his fat little fingers buried in Sansil’s fur, the cat stretching happily beneath the gentle ministrations. 

“Not a problem,” she says, quietly and to herself.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

She doesn’t bother the Mandalorian until it’s absolutely necessary.

She’s content for some time to simply sit with Sansil and the Child, who happily alternates between petting the loth-cat and rattling the knob she’d given him. If she’d worried that the fickle-tempered feline would find himself annoyed by the Child and scratch him, an offense which the Mandalorian would undoubtedly take personally, it was for naught. The creature is practically putty in the baby’s green little hands, and already Ash is beginning to see the signs of a fast-growing friendship.

Smiling to herself, she hefts herself to her feet and brushes her palms against her trousers, glancing around the ship. It could do with some scrubbing and repairs, a task she assumes her employment places on her shoulders. It’s not as if the Mandalorian was particularly specific in the details of her stay, though; she makes a note to ask him as she strides towards the cockpit.

He’s seated in the pilot’s seat, his fingers darting across the control panel with knowledgeable ease. She waits as he steers them through hyperspace, until the ship has emerged somewhere presumably far from Mos Eisley, before she plops into the co-pilot’s chair. His helm tilts towards her, and a moment later he asks, “Something you need?”

“Several things,” she replies, brushing a stray lock of hair away from her eyes before lifting a hand, ticking items off on her fingers. “I need to know where to put my things, what the expectations of my employment are, and the rules of the ship.”

“Rules?”

“I’d imagine there’s at least a few.” She gestures vaguely to his helmet, until he nods once in acknowledgement. “So?”

“I need you to make any and all repairs that you see fit,” he begins after a brief pause, and she listens silently as he continues. “If we ever come under fire, you’ll be in charge of keeping us aloft while I get us out of whatever situation is occurring. You are never to pilot the ship on your own, unless you have my permission or I am…indisposed, and time is of the essence. When it comes to the child – where is he now?”

“Playing with Sansil,” she responds, and she can just _feel_ the look he must be giving her underneath his helmet. “Oh, relax. They adore each other.”

“There will be times when you are in charge of his well-being,” the Mandalorian continues immediately. “Protect him with your life. If you allow something to happen to him – “

“I’m not some heartless murderer,” Ash says with a scoff. “What, you think I’ll be back there dangling him by his legs out of the ship?”

“ – it won’t be good for you. If I need you to, care for him. Keep an eye on him, because he has a way of…mischief, if he’s allowed. Speaking of the loth-cat, I expect it to be on it’s best behavior. Set it up how you see fit, but keep it out from underfoot.”

“ _His_ name is Sansil, and he’s a perfect gentleman.”

The Mandalorian powers on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I take my meals alone, in my own quarters, which are off-limits to you. You’ll have your own room. There’s a refresher on the same level that I’ll show you. You are never to remove my helmet. You are never to ask me to.” 

“Personal space. Got it.”

“If there comes a time where things are dicey, _listen_ to me. I know what I’m doing.”

“Of course. Esteemed bounty-hunter, and all that. Beyond necessary repairs to the ship, am I allowed to tidy up?”

A single armored shoulder lifts. “If you feel the need. Don’t mess with the weapons cache.” 

“Speaking of weapons – can I carry my own, or will you eviscerate me for it?”

“Wiser to allow it. Do you know how to handle a blaster?”

“I’m better with blades, but I’m a decent shot.” An understatement – it’s always understatements with her. Better to catch someone by surprise than to lay bare a full hand.

“Do you have your own?”

“Blaster? No. Blades? Plenty.”

He sounds so reluctant that she can’t help laughing when he says, “I’ll supply you with one.”

“I’m not going to shoot you in your sleep, you know. Wouldn’t be much of a point, would it? Then it’d just be me alone on this ship – what d’you call it, by the way? – with a strange green baby and an irate cat. No thanks.”

His helmet swivels towards her. She holds his gaze, or what she _assumes_ is his gaze, before he turns away. When he does, she sticks her tongue out at him.

“Razor Crest,” he murmurs, modulator failing to hide his exasperation. “And I saw that.”

Before she can reply he’s standing, gesturing with a gloved hand for her to follow him. She rises, though admittedly she takes her time doing so. She doesn’t know what it is about him, but his unflinching coolness makes her _want_ to rankle him, to elicit some sort of reaction that she deems out of character. Taunting a Mandalorian is surely a foolish task, but Ash has always thrived on risk. What sort of thief would she be if she didn’t?

When they step out of the cockpit, she shoots the Mandalorian a smug look when they behold the Child, curled up sleepily with Sansil, who slides open one eye to pin the Mandalorian with a stare that seems to dare him to disturb the kid. The armored man looses a soft sigh of resignation in response, the pair of them edging around the creature and baby to ascend a ladder to a higher level of the Razor Crest. It’s cleaner here, gleaming and practically undisturbed, signifying that he spends little time lounging about in his room – which she assumes is contained in a closed door to her left. Hers is across from his almost directly, with the fresher at the end of the hall.

The room he shows her to is undisturbed, made up of a single cot that takes up most of the space in the cramped quarters, and a metallic desk – sans chair – bolted to the wall. Peaking out from beneath the cot is a shallow, gleaming trunk for her things. She stands with her hands on her hips, surveying it. 

It’ll do.

The Mandalorian is behind her when she turns, silently observing her. She gazes up at him, significantly shorter and slenderer than his padded frame, one of her eyebrows arching skyward.

“One last question.”

“Yes?” He asks.

“The kid – what’s his name?”

“He doesn’t have one.”

“So it’s just ‘the Child’? Boring, but I can work with it. And what do I call you?”

“That was three questions.”

“Mando it is,” Ash fires back, plucking from her memory what Motto had referred to him as. “If you _must_ know, since your social skills seem to be lacking, you can call me –“ 

“Ashmire.”

Touché. She assumes he gleaned that from Motto, as well.

“Just Ash, please. ‘Ashmire’ makes you sound like my father.” Her nose wrinkles at that, sudden and unbidden. Thoughts of her father always elicit the same response – rising gooseflesh on her arms, a cramping in her belly, disgust and tar and decay in her soul. Her mother once told her that one could see all of her emotions clearly in her eyes, no matter how her face and body hid them. But if he notices, he doesn’t ask. She doesn’t imagine that he’ll ever ask much about her at all. Though they’re strangers, still feeling each other out, the thought makes her feel…lonely. But he’s already turning away from her, broad shoulders maneuvering through the doorway as he strides back down the hall.

“Get settled in. I’ll get you a blaster,” he calls. And then he adds, infuriatingly, “Ashmire.”

“It’s Ash!” She calls after him, frowning. He offers no response, and with a sigh, she flops back onto the stiff cot. 

_Better than the streets of Mos Eisley, I suppose._


	4. The Mechanic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the wait, I've had a few busy weeks! 
> 
> I wanted to include a chapter that momentarily shows a little bit of life and normalcy upon the Crest, as well as Ash finding how she fits in with Mando. :) We'll be getting into some more exciting things in the next chapter!

_Trouble trickles down_  
_Secrets screaming out_  
_It's buried in the ground_  
_It's meant to come out_

Ash wastes very little time in getting to work on the Crest.

They’d departed from Mos Eisley the day prior, and already she’s up to her elbows in grease and tools. She’d figured after a very sleepless night in her new quarters that, unable to kick her habit of sleeping with one eye open due to some seriously shady living situations in her past, she would be in no hurry to begin. She should have been taking her time adjusting, settling into the flow of things, her new way of life. But she’d never been one to sit idly for too long, and that morning while she’d been silently tucked into the cockpit beside Mando, murmuring to a sleepy Child, her restless hands had begun to twitch. 

He hadn’t asked any questions when she’d risen to pad quietly from the room, though she’d caught a glimpse of his helmet tilted in her direction as the door had closed behind her. He was… _stoic_ , to be sure. Not at all prone to wasting words when they weren’t necessary, as she’d discovered the night before when she’d sat across from him at a makeshift table, scarfing down a meal ration while he fed the Child. She’d been practically bursting with questions, or perhaps simply a need to fill the silence, but she’d restrained herself. Narrowly. 

She mulls over it now as she kneels inside a compartment on the lower level of the ship, surrounded by wiring and machinery on all sides. It’s abundantly clear to her that Mando has only hired her out of necessity, and she’s only accepted out of…what? A desire to stop running for one damned second? To stop living by the skin of her teeth, to stop looking over her shoulder at every noise, to stop hovering around cantinas, fearful that she’d hear a scrap of news that meant she’d need to move on? 

She’s not sure – and even if she was, would it matter? She assumes it won’t be terribly long, in the grand scheme of things, before Mando – he who is so very fond of his privacy and solitude – tires of another human being sharing his space.

A snuffling noise breaks her out of her thoughts, and she glances up. 

Above her is a square opening where she’d removed the floor panel to investigate a troublesome buzzing noise underneath, and Sansil is perched haphazardly at the edge of it, tail twitching as he peers down at her. Whenever the Mandalorian has the kid with him in the cockpit, where Sansil is decidedly not allowed, the loth-cat occupies his time with shadowing Ash. 

A frown tugs at her lips as she resumes gazing at the twisted mess of wires in her gloved hands. The Crest is old, and someone – whether that be Mando or whoever he acquired it from – has taken a few questionable shortcuts with repairs. She’s no Peli Motto, but even _she_ can see a disaster waiting to happen.

Deftly she begins to pluck them apart, twisting free exposed cabling and rearranging them before starting to gingerly re-twist them, minus the kinks and sloppiness. She takes her time, as Motto taught her, her fingers working to organize them neatly for future repairs, huffing when she discovers that two of the wires weren’t even connected properly in the first place.

“This,” she murmurs to herself. “Is going to be a nightmare. I mean, honestly, Sansil! Look at this. No wonder the ladder hatch isn’t working. Maker knows what else…”

Sansil offers a brief and somewhat underwhelming meow in response, familiar with her theatrics. She continues to mutter to the creature as she works, head bent and thighs aching from holding herself in the same position for so long. When at last she’s gotten everything sorted out, and the buzzing noise has blessedly stopped, she adjusts her weight and sighs.

“That should hold up for now. Shall we find the next task and then see about getting you lunch?”

Normally the mention of food would have Sansil purring something fierce, but only silence meets her question. Glancing up, Ash finds that he’s no longer laying above her. Frowning, she begins to straighten, calling, “Oi, you better not be scratching at the cockpit door again. You’re pushing your luck – oh, hello.”

She’s poked her head above the floor to find Sansil perched before the kid, who’s cooing in delight as the cat bats at the edge of his robes. His round eyes meet hers, and his grin widens at the sight of her pulling herself back onto even ground. She’s barely made it to her feet before both he and Sansil have leveled her with pleading gazes, and she sighs.

“You’re hungry, too, huh? Alright, fine.” She stoops to gather the Child in one arm before ascending the rusted ladder, Sansil scampering up behind her. The moment the doors of the cockpit are in sight, the cat dashes for them, talons raised and poised to scratch by the time Ash has tripped after him.

“No ya’ don’t, you fat old womp rat,” she scolds, scooping him into her free arm and turning to march towards the tiny closet that serves as a makeshift kitchen. She’s halfway there when she hears the soft whir of a door opening, and she turns to find Mando framed in the doorway of the cockpit, helmet turned towards her.

She’s abruptly aware of how she must look: scowling, the Child on one hip, the loth-cat on the other, both clinging to her dirty work tunic. Her silver-blonde hair is pulled into a messy bun atop her head, a sharp contrast to her dark roots, and several wisps that have escaped frame her gleaming, grease-smeared face. 

“It’s about time for me to feed Sansil, and the kid found us, so I figured I’d feed him as well,” she offers into the silence, cocking her hip to one side to push Sansil further into her grasp. 

After a moment, Mando dips his head, moving towards her with outstretched hands. “I can do it. You look like you’ve been busy.” 

“Well,” she says, trying to gather her thoughts as she presses the Child into Mando’s arms. “Only a bit. The upper level was fine, for the most part. I tidied up a little, but don’t worry, I didn’t go into your room.” 

She turns and continues into the kitchen, where she puts Sansil down to begin preparing a bowl of dried meat strips for him, and powdered broth for the kid. “The only thing that needed fixing up there was the ‘fresher door – it was a bit finicky this morning, so I took care of it.” She pauses to reach for a dented kettle, filling it with water before placing it on the single heating element. “I scrubbed the middle deck. I managed to get most of the rust off the equipment, did a check-up on the vital parts of the ship that I can reach from in here, and dusted a little. Still more of that to do.”

Once the water is hot, she pours it into a chipped wooden mug over the broth powder, pillars of steam rising from the surface. “I fixed the issue with the lower hatch – were _you_ the one that did the patch-job on the wiring? Because honestly, Mando, it was awful. Oh! And I took stock of inventory. There are a few things we’ll need at the next stop. Grub for Sansil, a few minor parts for the ship, your stores of bacta are running low, and we could use something other than just rations to whip up.”

She turns, still in the midst of her rambling report, to find that Mando is staring at her in total silence. He’s impossible to read, and she winces, suddenly sure that she’s somehow overstepped her boundaries.

“Shit, sorry. Too much, huh? I just had the time on my hands, and I thought…” She trails off, shaking her head. 

“You’re aware that I didn’t expect you to do _everything_ the first day, aren’t you?” He asks slowly.

“I’ve hardly done everything. Not even close.” She side-steps him, trying her hardest to maneuver without falling flat on her face due to one very hungry loth-cat weaving around her legs. Huffing, she places the bowl of meat on the floor, watching as the creature immediately begins to devour it. “Still have to do some repairs to the outside of the ship, too, whenever it’s convenient.”

He’s still just standing there staring at her, and she forces herself to not fidget underneath what she perceives to be a heavy gaze. She images that he’s sizing her up, measuring her worth, drawing conclusions that she can’t even begin to guess at. She folds her arms under her breasts, hugging her torso as watches him in return. Is he regretting this, she wonders? Contemplating which planet will be closest to drop her off on? Or is he instead impressed with her work ethic, glad that he brought her along?

It’s impossible to tell.

“So,” Ash says, her voice perhaps a bit too loud, echoing around them. He _still_ hasn’t said anything, and honestly, it’s making her more than a little nervous. Thus far she’s been fine with his silence, but this time it seems…pointed, in a way that she can’t decipher. “Where are we headed?” 

He shifts a fraction, his helmet tilting down to watch the Child sip at his broth. When he replies, his modulated voice is even. “There are a few small planets I need to check, and from there we’ll circle around to search the rest of the Outer Rim.”

“Search? For what? You never really told me what you _do_ , you know. I mean, beyond scaring the hell out of people for a living.”

He huffs at that, something between a sigh and a low chuckle. “I’m searching for…the Child’s family. As of now, he is my Foundling. But I made a promise that I would scour the galaxy in search of his _true_ parents, if they live. I’ll keep an ear out for work where we stop, too.”

She blinks at that, her gaze dropping to the kid, eyebrows raising. She knows better than to ask how Mando came about acquiring him, because her gut tells her that he won’t answer. The information he’s given her so far is the bare minimum, and he doesn’t seem inclined to offer her anymore. “Got it. So, search for more little green people and try not to die in the meantime. Is that what you were looking for on Tatooine?”

“No. Peli Motto repaired my ship recently, and I needed her services again.” 

“I’m beginning to think being a part of your crew will entail numerous and frequent repairs.”

“Maybe.”

She snorts, pushing herself off the wall and rolling her shoulders. “Good thing you have me, then. She would have ended up charging you eventually, you know, and she’s proud of the work she does. She can get testy when she thinks it’s not being properly maintained or appreciated. Anyways, I’m going to shower.” 

She needs one desperately, of course, but she also assumes that he might want some time to eat without having to duck into his room. Does he take his helmet off around the Child, she wonders? She’s not terribly familiar with Mandalorians, and their culture is something she’d never thought to question until she found herself in the employ of one. 

A million questions, all swarming in her head, all unlikely to be answered. Her lips twitch as she maneuvers up onto the upper level, making a show of retrieving clean clothes from her quarters and then noisily tromping to the refresher so that he knows it’s safe. It’s a small, cramped space and not particularly easy to maneuver; she squeezes between the sink and vacc tube to reach the little sanisteam that spans from one wall to another, stripping out of her clothes as she goes. 

She can’t help but wonder as she steps into the enclosed shower how Mando manages to clean himself effectively. It’s a tight squeeze even for her – though once her mind begins to picture him hunched over, scrubbing at his shoulders, she stubbornly presses the thoughts away. Her hand darts out to press the power switch, and a burst of scalding steam meets her naked flesh, making her flinch.

_”Papa, it’s too hot.”_

_“We must learn to tolerate pain, to overcome fear. Only then may we rise above the confines of our mortal flesh, and endure that which we thought we could not. What use will you be to me if you buckle at the first pinch of agony?”_

She blinks hard against the torrent of memories, yanking at knobs until the steam is lukewarm, almost chilled. Months ago, she might have curled in upon herself and endured the fresh wave of hurt and fear with trembling hands and gasping breath. But she’s hardened since she escaped the confines of her past, and she will not let herself fall apart now.

Still, she showers as quickly as she can. Once her normally peach-hued skin is red and raw, she initiates a drying sequence and steps out to clothe herself in a soft black tunic and charcoal gray leggings, letting her damp hair fall straight and unbound past her shoulders. 

When she emerges downstairs again, after having made a purposefully loud descent, she finds Mando has resumed his place in the cockpit, though the door is set to an open position. The Child is slumbering in his bassinet, and Sansil – to her immense astonishment – is curled up inside with him.

“Wow,” she murmurs pointedly as she pads into the room, plopping gracelessly into the co-pilot seat. 

Mando sighs, though it sounds less serious than usual – she thinks, anyways. He’s still quite new to her, and it’s difficult for her to decipher the subtle changes in the noises he makes. “He threw a fit until I let the beast in with him. I’m beginning to regret letting you bring the cat.”

“Oh, come on.” She arranges her limbs into a mess of disarray, one leg dangling over an armrest, her head tilted back at an angle. Her eyes flutter partially closed in an effort to disguise the way she studies Mando, taking note of an empty bowl in his lap. “Sansil’s a good babysitter. I’m pretty sure he’s half-convinced that the kid is his kitten or something. You not a fan of pets?”

He pauses so long that she thinks he won't answer, but eventually he does. "I've never had one."

Interesting. In truth, though, she hadn't either before Sansil. And it wasn't as if the loth-cat was something she'd sought out. Not long after she'd settled into her shabby resident on Mos Eisley, she'd found the scrawny creature scrapping in an alleyway, outnumbered two-to-one. He'd been a pitiful sight, skinny and dirty, and the other street cats had not been kind to him. But still he'd fought, and when he'd won his unlikely battle, he had met her astonished gaze from where she'd watched from the shadows. Something about him had drawn her in, made her sympathetic to his cause. It had taken time to build his trust, of course. Every day at dawn she'd taken him a bowl of milk and strips of jerky that had been leftover from her breakfast, always hovering just beyond his reach to ensure that he wasn't bullied out of his meal. Eventually, he'd allowed her to touch him, and then he'd followed her home. They'd been inseparable ever since. 

She and Mando lapse into an easy silence after that. Her day of work is beginning to catch up with her, her limbs loose and her mind sluggish after her shower. She occupies herself with staring out into space as they glide through the galaxy, her eyes catching on stars and distant planets. Normally when she’s hopping from one place to another, it’s as a stowaway, hiding in some cramped part of a ship with no access to light or sound. But she’s missed this – watching the way the universe moves around her from behind the safety of glass. When she’d been a child, before her life had taken the turn that it had, she’d wanted to be a pilot – like her mother. She could vividly recall being tiny and delicate, perched on her mother’s lap as the woman indulged her daughter with a brief flight now and again. 

_”Do you want to set our coordinates for home, Ash? Press this button here and turn this knob just a fraction…yes, like that. My brilliant girl.”_

She’s just began to doze off when Mando’s voice reaches her, tugging her gently out of her dreams.

“What were you doing there?”

“Mm?”

“On Tatooine. You asked earlier why I was there, if I was searching for something. Why were you?”

“Maybe I’m from Tatooine.” 

“No. Your accent…it’s not one you typically find of the locals in Mos Eisley.”

She hums at that. Maybe if she’d been fully lucid, she would have deflected, offering him a sarcastic quip or a half-assed explanation. But instead Ash finds herself saying, “I was running from something, and Mos Eisley seemed like a good place to hide. No one asks questions there, and work for a thief in a city of degenerates isn’t difficult to find. It was time for me to move on, though.”

"Should I be concerned about being offered a puck with your face on it in the future?" His voice is softer than usual, or maybe it just sounds that way to her in her current state. 

"Don't think so. But if you do, I won't hold it against you for sticking me in carbonite."

He says nothing in return, but when her eyes creep open, she finds that he’s looking towards her, the light of the stars gleaming off his helmet. She offers him a sluggish half-grin, and then her eyes are closing again, her thoughts falling blessedly silent.


	5. The Discovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you all so, so much for the kudos and comments. It means the world to me to see a notification pop up that someone has commented, and I assure you that I spend a good five minutes per comment just grinning over the things you guys write! 
> 
> Also, please forgive me if there are ever any typos in my chapters. I have no betas, and I read it over before posting but sometimes miss things in my excitement to get the next chapter out. I always go back in the following hours to reread several times and correct whatever I missed.

_I'll follow you down_  
_while we're passing through space_  
_I don't care if we fall from grace_  
_I'll follow you down_

They settle into a comfortable routine in the week that follows.

Each morning she wakes to find him already fully armored and functioning, typically either seated in the cockpit, cleaning his weapons, or feeding the Child. Ash would pad downstairs, usually still yawning, greet Mando, and then go about her usual routine of making caf and whatever meal ration looked the most appealing, feeding Sansil, and showering. 

From there, she would set to work on whatever the next project on her list dictated, whether it be mechanical repairs, minor touch-ups, or a good old-fashioned scrubbing. 

Twice now Mando has stopped on whichever remote planet catches his eye, and both times he has instructed her to stay behind with the Child, promising that soon they will stop somewhere that Ash can shop. She doesn’t complain; the Child is mischievous and endlessly curious, but he’s easy to keep an eye on as long as she remains diligent – and besides, she always has two pairs of eyes on him. Sansil, strange beast that he is, rarely ever lets the Child out of his sight.

It’s during Mando’s second absence that something strange happens. 

She’s seated on the floor outside of the cockpit with her back against the wall, her knees tucked up close to her chest. She has a mug of caf cradled in one hand, the other occupied with rolling the rattling metal knob to the Child, who’s splayed out across from her. Sansil is curled beside him, beady eyes tracing the knob’s path back and forth, his tail twitching lazily around his haunches. 

Ash is only halfway paying attention; there’s no danger to the kid when he’s in plain sight playing with her, after all. Meanwhile her mind is wandering, silently cataloging everything they need when they stop by the market. Beyond the things she listed to Mando previously, she could do with a few new garments. At the moment her bags are sparse, torn between clothes she’s had forever (which she knows she will grow out of now that she can afford multiple meals a day), and one or two gowns that she only uses for special occasions – usually to dazzle and distract a target. Ample amounts of flesh and a pretty face tends to be a cheap trick, in her opinion, but a very effective one.

_Maybe a sturdy pair of gloves for repairs, or a brush. My fingers can’t serve as a makeshift comb forever -_

She’s torn out of her reverie at that moment by Sansil suddenly springing forward, his bird-like feet batting the knob-turned-ball halfway across the cargo bay. The Child laughs, delighted, and lifts his chubby little hands towards the loth-cat as if reaching for Sansil. But his green face has screwed up, his ears splay back against his head, and his eyes flutter closed as if he’s concentrating very, very hard.

“Hey,” Ash murmurs. “What’s the matter? You having some tummy distress? I really don’t feel like changing a dia- ”

She breaks off with a gasp as Sansil suddenly begins to _levitate_. His feet aren’t very far off the ground, but he’s definitely in the air, the ball dropping from his claws and rolling back towards the Child. 

A strangled yelp escapes against Ash, which turns into a full-blown howl as she jolts and spills her caf, the hot black liquid splattering her thighs. Even through her thin leggings, she recoils from the scalding burn, spluttering as she falls to the side in her haste to get away from the offending mug. The commotion seems to break the Child’s concentration, and Sansil drops gracefully back to the ground, looking no worse for wear.

That’s it. She is officially, one-hundred-percent crazy, Ash decides. She’s crouched halfway between seated and standing, her pants soaked and thighs throbbing as she stares at the Child with wide eyes. His mouth parts to emit a soft yawn, his eyes blinking sleepily up at her in apparent confusion at her reaction.

“I – did you just – but you - ” She’s spluttering desperately, batting at her legs with her bare hands as if it will soothe the burn. The smart thing to do would be remove the sopping clothing, but she’s too focused on trying to figure out _what the hell just happened_. Sure, she still hasn’t been sleeping as well as she’d like, but she’s certainly not deprived. Maybe she dozed off and didn’t realize it. Maybe it had all been some weird dream concocted by her half-asleep brain. 

Which she might have believed, if it hadn’t been for the ball still rolling slowly back towards the Child as if being pulled. 

“Oh, Maker. Oh - he’s gonna kill me for this,” Ash groans, staggering over to the Child, her hands fluttering around him anxiously. “I spend a few hours alone with you and now you’re doing all of this freaky stuff, and I don’t even know _what’s happening_ \- ”

There’s a shuddering from the ship, and then the loading ramp is easing open, rays of sunlight trickling in to ignite the bay. She knows that she needs to pull herself together before Mando sees the state she’s in, but she can’t seem to drag in enough air, and her wide eyes flick towards the sound of armor clanking and boots thudding against metal. 

He’s strong-arming a cursing Rodian on board, somehow making it seem effortless despite the way the man is snarling and thrashing. Ash instinctively clutches the Child closer to her despite the clusterfuck of thoughts and emotions coursing through her, and perhaps it’s that little movement that draws Mando’s gaze. She sees the exact moment that he spots her, because he goes rigid and pauses for a fraction of a second. That’s all it takes before he’s harshly shoving his captive into the carbonite freezer, the hiss of it loud and jarring. A moment later he’s striding towards her, helmet tilting as he takes in the sight of her: trembling, a bewildered Child in her arms, her trousers soaked and the smell of coffee that’s splattered around her acidic in the air. Before Ash can react, Mando has swept the kid from her, inspecting every part of the Child that is visible to him as one hand goes to the blaster at his hip.

“What happened?” He hisses under his breath, whirling to glance around as if expecting someone to leap out of the shadows. “Is the Child hurt? Are you?” 

“I – I - ” She pauses, forces herself to take in a deep breath, because she realizes she’s been hyperventilating. Her hands go to her hair, smoothing it roughly away from her face as she gulps. “No. No, he’s not hurt, he just…Mando, he did something _really weird_ and I swear to the Maker that I didn’t do anything to cause it. I don't think, anyways.” 

“Slow down. What do you mean by weird?” 

“He…he reached out to Sansil, and all of a sudden the cat was floating, and then the knob was rolling towards us, and I…” 

Mando exhales audibly, the noise crackling through his modulator. He swiftly side-steps Ash, who is still standing with her fingers twined in her own hair, waiting for the moment that Mando explodes. But he doesn’t. He tucks the kid safely into the floating bassinet and then returns to her side, holding his gloved hands up slowly, as if he’s trying to calm a raging beast. 

“Ashmire,” he says, and she can’t even be bothered to correct him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. The Child is fine, and so is…Sansil?”

His statement tapers off into a question, and she nods her head quickly, almost furiously, until he reaches out and places a single fingertip against her forehead to still the motion. 

“Good. Then there’s nothing to be concerned about. I’m sorry; I should have told you that he sometimes does…that.”

“I didn’t…break him?”

He makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like he’s trying to choke back laughter as he shakes his head. “No. Have you never met anyone that was Force-sensitive?”

“No,” she admits quietly. In the grand scheme of things, before she’d parted ways with her father, Ash had been sheltered. She’d had to be, though she had not immediately understood why when she was a young child. But as she’d grown older she’d learned that her father was not keen on the idea of her growing close to others, lest she slip up and reveal something about him that he deemed unsavory. And afterwards, when she’d been on her own…well, it wasn’t as if there were Jedi roaming the streets freely anymore. They were like mythical creatures, discussed in whispers but never glimpsed. At least not by her, and certainly not in the streets of the seedy cities she favored. 

“You’re hurt.” Mando’s voice has grown abruptly serious again, and Ash glances down to see that he’s gazing in the direction of her stomach. Her tunic had ridden up when she’d lifted her arms, and there’s a swath of skin above the waistband of her leggings that is vivid red and angry. Already she can tell that it will blister, and she winces when she feels the fabric of her trousers rubbing at her thighs when she shifts.

“Oh, yeah. I had a mug of caf when he startled me. I’ll get it cleaned up immediately.”

“I don’t care about the spill,” Mando sighs, exasperated. “You need to…” He pauses then, gesturing vaguely towards her lower body. “We should have enough bacta to take care of it.” 

Before she can protest he’s striding away from her, ascending the ladder to the upper levels. Several heartbeats later he returns, a dwindling tube of bacta curled in one of his palms. He hesitates for a moment before his hand goes to her shoulder, guiding her back gently into one of the chairs in the corner. 

“Wait,” Ash protests, feeling as if she’s slowly, sluggishly emerging from the shocked state she’d settled into. She’s suddenly very aware of where her injuries are, and there’s not a chance in hell that she’s letting him tug down her trousers to smear bacta onto her burned thighs. “I can do it.”

“I know. I just wasn’t certain if you were about to faint or not.”

He presses the salve into her hands, along with a roll of bandages, and then turns his back on her to busy himself with tucking in a still-yawning Child across the room. Once she’s satisfied that he won’t be turning around, she eases her pants down to her knees. The sting of it makes her hiss, and from the corner of her eye she sees his shoulders stiffen, but he keeps his back to her as she slathers the warm bacta onto her wounds. The pain relief is immediate, but she still takes care to gingerly wrap the injuries before she tugs her pants back up to her waist. 

Sighing, she tips her head back against the chair, her long, straight hair nearly brushing the floor as she slumps down. There is a long silence, but for once, he is the first to break it.

“I never asked you about your other injury. Your shoulder.”

“My…? Oh, yeah, it’s fine. I mean, there’s a nasty scar, but I’ve kept it clean and it doesn’t bother me too much as long as I don’t tug too hard on the scab.” She shrugs just as he turns to look at her, and her gaze skips to his newest quarry. “I didn’t know you were hunting today.”

“Didn’t plan on it, but I needed the credits, and this one was an easy quarry. He was hiding out in town. Person looking for him just didn’t want to bother getting her hands dirty.”

“Mm,” Ash murmurs, biting back a sigh as the last remnants of her pain leaves her. There’s a sense of embarrassment for her overreaction creeping up on her, her cheeks coloring faintly as she imagines how she must have seemed to him in that moment. She tries to remedy it by telling herself it was only due to her growing affection for the kid, which surely Mando will not judge her for. “So, where to next?”

“Castilon. There’s a fairly large city there that I’d like to search for clues, and we should be able to pick up whatever we need there.”

“When do we leave?”

“Now.”

Ash quirks a brow at that, tilting her head in his direction. “Hm. I figured you’d want to…I dunno, _rest_ after dragging in a quarry.”

“There’s no need for that,” he replies, and she snorts.

“You know, I never knew any Mandalorians before you. I mean sure, I heard stories as a child, but those were mostly silly tales that I assume lacked truth in many regards. I figured that maybe I’d learn a thing or two from you, but you’re a closed book, Mando. Guess that means I’ll have to write my own version.” 

“I’m thrilled to hear it,” he deadpans.

“Yeah? I’ve got a bit so far.” Clearing her throat, she mimes writing in air, her voice suddenly very serious. “The Mandalorian: elusive, mysterious, and likely looking for you if you cross paths with one. Prone to invoking extreme feelings of frustration if you attempt to decipher what the hell they’re thinking underneath their helmets. Fond of little green Foundlings, but not so much of loth-cats.” 

“Hilarious,” he murmurs, shaking his head as he moves past her towards the cockpit. She watches him go with a crooked grin on her face. Yes, she decides; she’ll have quite a bit of fun with this one.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

They arrive on Castilon just as the sun begins to creep lower in the sky. The moment they’ve entered the airspace above the bustling seaside city of Thurra, a voice crackles over the comm, the sound of it loud enough to jolt Ash out of her nap where she’s still slumped in the chair he’d guided her to. She can't quite remember what her dreams had consisted of, but she's certain that he was involved, somehow. The thought makes her shift in her seat.

There’s the sound of Mando’s voice murmuring something back to the control station, and then he’s guiding them into a sanctioned landing bay, their descent smooth and gentle.

Ash edges to her feet, stretching and yawning just as Mando emerges from the cockpit. Guiltily she looks down towards the dried coffee stains on the floor, which she’d meant to clean before she’d dozed off. While Mando gets to work rousing the Child, she scrubs the floors and walls clean before ascending to her quarters to change into an unstained pair of trousers and a fading cloak.

When she emerges in the cargo bay again, he’s ready and waiting for her. His helmet dips down a fraction, and she realizes that he’s checking for her blaster. Tugging up her tunic, she pats where it’s holstered and hidden, and he nods his head in satisfaction.

“This is for you,” Mando tells her, dropping a clinking coin purse into her hands. “Your wages for this month, plus extra for whatever the ship needs.”

“Much appreciated,” she simpers, and he shakes his head at her before continuing. 

“Take the Child,” he says, passing a still-sleepy kid into her arms. “I need to keep an eye out while we move without having to worry about keeping him concealed.” 

“Got it. Hold down the fort, Sansil,” Ash calls over her shoulder as they descend the lowered ramp. The cat is nowhere to be seen, but she knows he’s lurking somewhere.

Thurra is all faded white stone, a bustling flurry of movement and smells with all manors of people and creatures moving through the streets. Ash trails after Mando and tries not to gaze too long at anyone, pulling her cloak tightly around the Child, who is cradled close to her bosom. The temperature here is significantly cooler than Tatooine, or most other places she’s visited. Her cloak is woefully inadequate compared to the coats that most others wear, and the majority of it she’s tucked so tightly around the kid that it leaves her own form bare and shivering. Another thing to add to her list to purchase, she supposes. 

The Mandalorian strides just ahead and to the right of her, where she is clearly visible to him from the corner of his visage. She doesn’t miss how people give them a wide berth the moment they spot Mando, and she wonders what they think. Perhaps that he’s her bodyguard, leading her to safety. Little do they know that she’s got an arsenal of her own on her; aside from her blaster, there are two vibroblades strapped to her calves, another smaller one beneath her breasts. 

They stop into the first cantina they see, which doubles as an inn. Ash busies herself with getting situated at a table in the corner with the Child, which she picked both due to it being half in shadows, and for its view of the door. Mando shoulders his way to the bar to speak in a murmur to the portly woman tending it, the two of them gesturing with their hands as they speak.

After a moment he turns, striding across the room towards her. She can’t help but take notice of his smooth rolling gait, the way people scramble out of his way while casting furtive glances in his direction, perhaps sensing something lethal lurking beneath his armor. Can’t help but admire it. She’s always been the type of girl to sidle her way through crowds, light-stepping and pirouetting quietly when she needs to, dazzling and beaming when it fits her purpose. But he…he is so effortless in his manor, so sure. He does not need to change skins and camouflage himself to fit his purposes like some elusive reptile. 

“The market is closed for the day,” he informs her as he slides into the booth. She edges away to offer him the best vantage point of the entrance, settling the Child between them. “It will open at daylight tomorrow. There’s also an archive in the Old District that I’d like to visit to see if I can glean any information about the Child’s species. I took the liberty of purchasing us lodging for the night. There’s to be a celebration of sorts tonight, and the hotelier informed me that the docking bay will likely be very unpleasant with the frequent traffic.”

He breaks off there as the stout woman in question bustles over, a tray of food in her hands. She slides two steaming bowls of food onto the table, along with two mugs and two gleaming keys. Once she’s gone, Ash surges forward to place her hands on either side of her bowl, huffing out a grateful breath at the warmth that floods her chilled hands. There’s broth and thick chunks of roasted meat, along with a fluffy roll stewing in the liquid of the bowl. It smells…well, absolutely divine.

The Mandalorian must notice her gooseflesh and shuddering, because after a moment spent breaking up chunks of bread and meat into smaller pieces for the Child he says, “There’s a bathing hall just out back, if you wanted to…warm yourself.”

It takes her a moment to answer; her cheeks are already bulging with the succulent food, the spices and fat making her eyes drift partially closed. She’s not used to eating things this wonderful, and she’s sure that it shows. Frowning at her self-perceived savagery, she wipes her mouth on a folded cloth and lifts her mug to take a swig of the contents.

To say that she’s surprised to find it’s mead is an understatement. She was expecting water, which is what she assumes is in the Child’s cup.

Once her mouth is clear, she glances up and smiles as she gives a mockingly scandalized whisper under her breath. “Well, well, Mando. Are you trying to get me _drunk?_ ”

“No,” he replies flatly, and something about the lack of amusement in his voice only makes Ash’s grin widen. “You were cold. I’ve heard alcohol warms the blood.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been drunk before, Mando.”

His silence is telling, though wisely she does not mock him for this particular tidbit of information. Instead, she simply bobs her head and says, “Thank you.”

There’s a long stretch of quiet as she absolutely devours her food, and only once it’s gone does she lean back against the cracked leather of the booth, casting her gaze in his direction again.

“What about you? You need to eat.”

“I’ve instructed food to be left outside of my room later,” he informs her. She nods at that, and though she does not say it out loud, she cannot help but marvel at the rules that govern his Creed. How difficult it must be, to stave off hunger and thirst no matter how intense simply because there are others who might look upon your face. She wishes that she could ask him about it, but she fears that he’ll think she’s making light of his situation. Hells, she doesn’t know what is considered disrespectful to a Mandalorian. 

Once the Child has finished slurping the last remnants of his broth, Mando scoops him into his arms, easing out of the booth. 

“Sansil will be fine for the night?” He asks her gruffly, and Ash blinks, surprised that he’d even bothered to consider the loth-cat.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll swing by the Crest in the morning to feed him. He might be a little cross with me if I’m late, but trust me, he’s far from starving.”

The Mandalorian gives a curt tilt of his head, and then she’s sliding out of the booth to follow him as he leads them through the room to a narrow set of stairs in the corner. The second floor reveals itself to be a long hallway of rooms, and she’s relieved to find that theirs are across from each other at the very end. She wonders if he arranged it. 

She hesitates on her threshold, tossing her hair aside as she glances over her shoulder at him. He’s standing there so straight and silent, simply staring at her, waiting for whatever it is she has to say.

“What do I owe you?” She asks, and he tilts his head. “For lodging, I mean.”

“Nothing. We’re here because of my search for information. The least I can do is ensure you a comfortable bed, decent food, and a hot bath. Speaking of - be careful when you go to bathe. You never know who took note of our presence. And be careful to whom you open your door to.”

She considers feigning irritation at his concern, but she doesn't. She knows that if she says the wrong thing now, he will never again do as he has done tonight. "Right. I'll...knock to let you know when I've left, and when I've returned. Just once."

With a dip of his helmet as acknowledgement, he’s turning to unlock his door, stepping inside and closing it behind him before she can even think to say goodnight to the Child. 

There’s a little crease between her eyebrows as she moves to unlock her own door, and then she’s crossing the threshold to survey her surroundings. It’s a small room, but not stuffed or uncomfortable. There’s a bed with what looks like a feather mattress, much to her happiness, along with a tiny fireplace already crackling with wood. Gauzy curtains cover the sole window, and in the corner there’s a desk complete with a mismatched but plush chair. 

She allows herself to take it in for a moment, but it does not last long. She can’t stop thinking about that bath that’s waiting for her – her toes curl in her boots as she imagines it, the warm water that will inevitably be perfumed with whatever fragrance of the inn’s choosing. 

Smiling, Ash steps into the hall, whistling quietly under her breath. She can’t help but cast a glance in the direction of Mando’s door, feeling strangely guilty that he will not be able to enjoy a moment alone in the baths, too. But before she can think deeper upon it, she’s lifting her knuckles to trail a single light knock against the surface, just enough to let him know she's there. Then she's striding down the hall at a brisk pace, her thoughts once more consumed with soap and clean hair and fresh, pink skin.


	6. The Surprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check the end of this chapter for notes! I didn't want to end up giving anything away :D

_There's blood in my mouth_  
_'Cause I've been biting my tongue all week_  
_I keep on talking trash_  
_But I never say anything_

As heavenly as the feather mattress had been, coupled with her freshly-scrubbed skin against clean sheets, Ash hadn’t slept as soundly as she’d have liked. It had taken her too long to unwind, to break away from her whirling thoughts long enough to doze off. Several hours later she’d been woken by the sounds of the celebration’s revelers stumbling drunkenly to their rooms, like a herd of Mudhorn trying to squeeze down the narrow halls. She’d had half a mind to tell them _exactly_ where she’d stick her vibroblade if they didn’t stop their poor attempts at whisper-shouting, but in the end, it hadn’t been worth the trouble (though the thought had amused her for some time afterwards).

She’s still awake when the sun rises, watching dust motes pirouette in stray beams of light that peak through gaps in the curtains. She can distantly hear the bustle of the cantina beneath her, and can smell the faintest whiff of what promises to be a divine breakfast. It is the rumbling of her stomach that propels her from her bed in the end, driving her to dress more swiftly than she might have otherwise. Slinging her cloak over her shoulders, she knots it at her throat and tromps towards the door – only to be caught by the glint of her reflection in a scuffed mirror above the dresser. 

She pauses, tilting her head at herself. There’s the barest hint of smudges beneath her dark eyes, but aside from that, she thinks that she looks…different. There’s color in her cheeks, already she’s filled out a bit more, and her gaze…it’s lighter than she’s remembered it being in years. There is still a hint of her wildness flickering there, shuttered away until she needs it, but she feels a bit less feral. Less afraid.

Poking her tongue out at her reflection to break the seriousness of her expression, she lifts her hands to comb her fingers through her bright hair. It’s long, falling in silky straight sheets to her waist. As a child, she’d loved her hair, loved that she’d gotten the fine texture from her mother, if not the color. She’d been devastated when her father had shorn it off not long after her thirteenth birthday, had cried herself sick that night while rubbing the pieces between the pads of her fingers.

_”Shh. There isn’t any need for that.”_

_”I liked it long. Like yours.”_

_”Like all else, it will grow again.”_

Her mother had been right. She hadn’t cut it since.

The knock on her door is gentle but startles her all the same, dragging her abruptly from her cloud of memories. She moves to stand beside it just as a voice on the other side seeps through.

“It’s me.”

She pulls open the door to find Mando waiting there, a bleary-eyed Child clutched in the crook of one arm. The kid is nestled comfortably against his father's armor, and though he is clearly still trying to pull himself from the clutches of sleep, he makes a delighted cooing noise when he sees Ash. She beams at him before pulling a ridiculously silly face, and is rewarded by the sound of his laughter. 

Mando steps back to allow her into the hall, where she stops to crane her head back, searching the planes of his helmet as if they might reveal something to her. 

“They keep you up, too?” She asks, jerking her head towards the other doors lining the hall. Her voice is still husky from misuse, and she clears her throat as Mando shrugs one of his armored shoulders. 

“It was to be expected. I’m a light sleeper.”

“You and me, both,” Ash agrees darkly. She thinks that she hears his modulator crackle out a huff of amusement, but she can’t quite be sure.

Together the two of them descend to the cantina, where several tables are already filled by early-risers. The smell of breakfast is downright mouth-watering on the first floor, and Ash eagerly slides into a booth with the Mandalorian and the kid, glad to find that the same woman from the night before is already headed their way with a tray in hand. She places a cup of caf and a steaming plate of food in front of Ash, and a cup of broth in front of the kid, before she turns without speaking and goes to attend another table. 

Ash quirks a brow at Mando, who again shrugs. 

“I came down early,” he explains. “Figured the earlier start we got, the better. You still need to swing by the Crest.”

“I do, but Sansil can wait. This smells too wonderful not to savor.” She busies herself with tucking into her plate, which consists of Iktotchian toast dusted with powdered sugar, dripping with bantha butter and carbosyrup, Galatic grits, and a sole Vakiir egg. It makes her mouth water, and she’s silently delighted that the cantinas of Thurra boast much better grub than those of Mos Eisley. Around bites, she murmurs to Mando, “Please tell me you had some of this before I got up. It’s heavenly.”

“I did,” he confirms, and now she’s _sure_ that he’s smiling in his helmet. “And it is. You thought the same about last night’s meal, too.”

“Well, yeah, can you blame me? I mean, don’t get me wrong, there were days when I’d been stacked after jobs and could have afforded to treat myself. But there were always more important things to buy, y’know? So it’s been…god, years since I’ve had food like this. Since my mother cooked for me, actually.”

The moment the words are out of her mouth, she wants to snatch them back. She’s grown too complacent after her trip down memory lane that morning. But she keeps her expression schooled into one of pleasant contentment as she scoops another bite of grits into her mouth.

He isn’t fooled. “A chef?”

He’s treading carefully, prodding gently. Ash indulges him with a snort. “Gods, no. She would have gone wild if she’d had a job that required her to sit around cooking all day. She was a pilot. Damn good one.”

He catches on the _’was’_ ; she sees it in the subtle tilt of his helmet, hears it in the soft “Ehh?” of the Child, who perhaps understood more than she’d realized. Or maybe it was his Force-sensitivity; could he sense the way her mood had shifted, silently but abruptly?

Regardless, she isn’t having this conversation. Isn’t admitting that she doesn’t know if her own mother is alive, or where she might be. Would never even _consider_ saying aloud that she’d tried to find her all those months ago, but perhaps not hard enough thanks to her own fear, only to fail. 

Instead, Ash polishes off the rest of her food, takes a few gulps of her caf, and stands up. “Alright, I’m gonna go feed Sansil and then head to the market. You off to the archives?”

“Yes,” the Mandalorian confirms, thankfully content to drop his line of questioning. 

“Little green dude with me, or you?”

“Me.” He reaches to grab something tucked away in the folds of his cloak, tossing it at her just as she goes to turn. Despite her yelp of indignation, Ash manages to catch it, turning it over in her hand: a commlink. “We’ll meet back here in two hours. I’ll let you know if I find anything that will hold me up. You do the same.”

“Aye aye, captain.” The sigh he rewards her with as she spins away is worth it, and her grin stays settled firmly on her lips for most of her walk back to the Crest. 

Just as she’d figured he would be, Sansil is truly offended at her audacity to be ten minutes late, sniffing in her general direction as she fills his bowl with meat. She gives him an affectionate pat to the flank that he ignores before she’s off, tucking her coin purse more securely within the folds of her cloak as she blends back into the bustling heart of Thurra. The market isn’t difficult to find; the stream of traffic directs her towards it, where she finds rows of stalls unfurled along the packed streets. 

She moves slowly through them, knowing what she needs but still enjoying browsing, her gaze catching on buttery soft strips of leather, brightly-colored rolls of silk, strange foreign fruits and dried strips of meat dangling from hooks in the rafters. There are so many smells that it almost makes her dizzy, each one wafting up from their respective vendors and lingering in the air. Had she not eaten already, she might have gorged herself upon them. But instead, she forced herself to settle on things that would not perish easily upon the Crest, food rations and items that could be stored away until she had a fire to cook with. 

She hunts down the bacta next, which is ridiculously more expensive that she would have imagined, and though she knows that Mando would likely have reimbursed her for it, she turns away from the stall with a shake of her head. The merchant, irritated that he has wasted his time with someone who had purchased nothing, turns to begin speaking with another woman. Predictably, he does not notice the tubes and patches slipped neatly up Ash’s sleeve, a slight of hand she’d managed as he’d declined and turned away. She tucks the bacta away into her dingy satchel as she bleeds into the crowd, already hunting for her next stall.

She might have felt guilt for it, back when she’d first began her unsavory profession. Might have chewed her lips raw that night wondering if she’d robbed the man of his means of living. That had been before she’d learned which merchants were simply out to swindle you, and which truly made a hard-earned living. She _never_ took from the latter, not even when jobs requested it of her. She had known was it was like to be broke, to be hungry, and she had vowed early on that she would not subject someone else to that. 

Luckily as her skills had grown, the small, petty jobs of stealing from merchants had been replaced by much larger ones, specifically after her acceptance to a Thieves Guild. Those were the jobs that she risked her life for, but which paid so very handsomely that she hadn’t once considered quitting. In the end, she’d been left with no choice; an unfortunate series of events had led to the Guild’s downfall, and she hadn’t the heart to seek out another. It had been like losing family, after all.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

In the end, Ash manages to scrounge together everything that she’d needed. Her satchel bulges with several sets of clothes, both for mild temperatures and cool ones. There’s a pair of gloves so supple and soft that she’d fallen in love with them instantly, food for Sansil, a few small parts for the ship, and a proper brush for her hair. Her coin purse is certainly lighter but not devastatingly so, and her mood has risen from that morning as she begins to make her way back towards the cantina.

She hasn’t heard from Mando yet, and he isn’t waiting for her when she steps into the establishment. She extracts the commlink from her pocket as she begins to climb the stairs, bringing it to her mouth and sing-songing in her most tone-deaf pitch, “Everything good on your end, Chrome Dome?”

And oh, he just sounds so wonderfully exasperated when he responds. _“Yes. Are you finished?”_

“A- _ffirmative_ ,” She replies, doing her very best impersonation of a Stormtrooper. Which, much like her singing, is poorly done. Maybe she’s having too much fun with this, but she can’t help herself. She’s got the commlink clutched awkwardly in one hand as she leans against the wall next to her room, fumbling in her bag for her key with the other. “Just getting back to my room now.” 

_“I’ll be there shortly. The kid’s upset about something. Started throwing a tantrum in the archives.”_

Right on cue, before Mando pulls his finger away from the comm button, Ash hears a furious wail. She can’t help but laugh, her lithe frame shaking with it as continues to dig. Where the _hell_ was that key? “Maybe he’ll calm down when he sees what I got him today. I don’t wanna spoil it over the comm, because frankly I never know just how much he understands, so you’ll be surprised, too. Sorry, nothing for you. I didn’t know what to get a stubborn old – oh!”

She breaks off with a sharp exhalation as she turns just enough for her cloak to shift, to catch for a fraction of a second on someone standing far, _far_ too close to her. In an instant her back is against her door, the blade she’d buckled to her wrist that morning drawn, only to find that she’s not the only one armed. 

_"Ashmire?"_ The Mandalorian's voice is painfully sober, barked harshly into the comm. _"Ash? What's going on?"_

She doesn't dare respond. 

A cowled man stands lounging just before her, his own blade pointed in her direction as, with his free hand, he twirls something lazily between long fingers. Her heart leaps into a gallop as they silently observe one another, she markedly more tense than he. The comm in her hand is crackling and buzzing with Mando’s voice calling her name, but she can’t answer, can’t let herself be distracted. Her blood is singing in her veins and her vision is locked onto the assailant, her mind kicking into hyperdrive as she tries to figure out how the _hell_ he snuck up on her. 

_"Ash!"_ That's pure panic now, bleeding through the comm. _"Answer me!"_

The man says nothing, and likewise makes no move towards her. They’re so close that one quick jab could signal the end, but Ash isn’t willing to risk making the first move. Her gaze darts to the item he’s twirling in his hand, which glints in the dim light of the hall, until her brow furrows as she realizes what it is.

“Is that my _key?”_ Her voice has dropped to a low, lethal purr, and she feels significantly more threatened when the man laughs in response. But there’s something about the sound that is familiar, that makes her cock her head swiftly to one side, eyes narrowing. Slowly, twitch by agonizing twitch, she presses down on the button of the comm again so that the Mandalorian can hear her. Prays that the man will think Mando has stopped trying to contact her in his panic. “Tyrlan?”

“I’ll readily admit that you’re the last person I thought to see skulking through the streets of Thurra,” the man says in a silky murmur, and when he reaches to pull his hood from his head, the air leaves Ash in a whoosh. He looks almost exactly as she remembered him – sharp-featured, fox-like, with a shock of auburn hair falling across his eyes and a peppering of stubble on his chin. There are more lines around his eyes now, around his thin lips, and a smattering of pepper at his temples. But otherwise…

“You’re just as ugly as I remember,” Ash says, her lips pulling up into a grin, her stance softening. Tyrlan laughs, and almost simultaneously they return their blades to their sheathes.

 _Almost._ Her movement is just a tad more reluctant. Ash knows that she needs to play this carefully. She is no less alarmed, no less defensive, despite the familiar face that greets her. Once, she might have almost called Tyrlan a friend. But she hasn’t seen him in years, doesn’t know what he might have heard or his reasoning for cornering her in a hall the way that he has. Her finger, unbeknownst to him, remains firmly on the button of the comm. 

“Still not as good a thief as me, I see,” Tyrlan says, flipping her key deftly in the air. Ash’s hand streaks out to grab it, tucking it close to her breast. “Though I saw your stunt with the bacta. Not bad.” 

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Tyrlan’s piercing green eyes rove across her face, his head dipping once in acknowledgement. “I’ve heard.”

The words are her very worst nightmare.

“Well.” Without turning her back to him, Ash gestures to the door of her rooms. “Come inside. We’ll talk.”

If it’s to come to a brawl, she knows it doesn’t matter where they are. She’d like for there to be more room to maneuver than this cramped hallway, though. Perhaps, if she's lucky, a fight won't be necessary. She can’t possibly know why an esteemed member of her previous Guild has tracked her to this inn, but she certainly has a few ideas.

 _Mando. Please, Gods, be close._ The intensity of the thought startles her, as does the conflicting one that follows. _Please hide the kid._

She hopes that what he’s hearing will convince him to do just that – or maybe even warn him away. To let her handle this and keep the Child out of harms way. If she’s unlucky and ends up slashed to ribbons, she hopes he’ll take care of Sansil for the sake of the little green bean that loves the loth-cat so much.

“I think I’d prefer if you came to mine.” Tyrlan sweeps into a half-bow, gesturing with a flourish down the hall, towards a door near the stairs. And then his lips spread into a slow smile as he gazes up at her from beneath the strands of his hair. “And please, do not think me to be rude. Whoever is listening on that commlink may come, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry (coughnotsorrycough) about the cliffhanger ;D We'll be getting into a bit more of Ash's past and some interactions with Mando regarding that in the next chapter, and here very soon, we'll reach a major plot point of the story!


	7. The Burning

_I feel the burning sun_  
_A fire in my lungs_  
_I taste the bitterness_  
_All I see is red_

“I’m offended that your room is nicer than mine.” Ash’s tone is deliberately flippant, her sigh a smidge dramatic as she lounges back against the plush pillows that are neatly arranged on Tyrlan’s bed. She’s sprawled out upon it like a languid cat, one arm draped across her hip as the other reaches – once again – for a plate of Falumpaset cheese and nerf steak perched upon a bedside table. Tyrlan, who is seated at a square table in the middle of the room, offers a thin smile but does not reply, nor call her on her bold behavior.

Perhaps it’s because the pair of them know that no matter how comfortably brazen they’re attempting to appear, everyone in the room is on edge.

Including the Jawa.

She’d been stunned, to be sure, when she’d stepped into Tyrlan’s room to find the creature huddled at the table, beady yellow eyes gleaming beneath his cloak. She was unaccustomed to seeing Jawa away from the scorching, sand-cloaked areas they favored – though she knew that some did venture into more populated cities. This one was alone, however, and through some light ribbing she’d discovered that the Jawa’s entire clan had been slaughtered, leaving him to his own devices. His search for work had apparently led him to an encounter with Tyrlan, and though the human man would not tell Ash what business the pair of them had together, the Jawa had traveled with him since.

“You never told me your name,” Ash points out, her gaze sliding to the Jawa who sits so silently across from Tyrlan. She doesn’t miss the telltale bulge beneath his chestnut cloak that signifies a weapon hidden upon his form – not that she can blame him for being prepared, when she knows that both Tyrlan and herself are armed to the teeth, as well. Prepared. Ready to draw and do what is necessary should there prove to be a threat.

The Jawa’s eyes widen a fraction at being addressed. Ash has assumed that he understands Basic due to his relationship with Tyrlan, and she’s rewarded by the knowledge that she’s right when he responds. Apparently he doesn’t _speak_ Basic very well, however, because it’s Jawaese that escapes from him when he responds. Which is, thankfully, not an issue; she comprehends and speaks an impressive amount of languages.

“Thazze Koke,” she repeats once he’s finished speaking, pointedly ignoring some of the more colorful aspects of his brash introduction. If her blithe behavior irritates the Jawa, she cannot tell. “A pleasure to meet you. I assume, anyways. I’m still not quite sure why I’ve been pulled aside for this…impromptu reunion.”

“Patience,” Tyrlan implores, an irritating smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. He’d always been so very good at worming his way beneath her skin, when he wanted to. “I assume that your friend will join us soon, and then we may get on with it.” 

Ash sighs and dips her head, her hair falling silkily across her cheeks as her eyes dip down towards her fingernails, hiding the way that they tighten at the corners. She hadn’t meant to get tangled up in… _whatever_ this was, and she certainly wasn’t thrilled about dragging the Mandalorian into her personal issues. He’d be furious with her, she imagined; maybe he wouldn’t come at all, instead leaving her to her own devices as he and the Child promptly evacuated from the planet.

_Suppose I’ll have to hunt him down if I survive…whatever this is. He has my cat._

But alas, a part of her suspected that the Mandalorian would not simply leave her…and that part of her was correct. 

When Tyrlan had informed her that he was aware of her ploy with the commlink, she’d resignedly relayed the room number that she was currently lounging within to the Mandalorian. He had not answered, but she knew he’d heard. And when a quick, furious knock rattles the wooden door, Ashmire knows that it’s him.

Thazze is the one to pull the door open, and though the Mandalorian does not physically react to the sight of a Jawa, Ash can practically sense his discomfort as he steps through the threshold. Perhaps it’s because of the numerous hours she’s spent holed up in a cockpit with him; she doesn’t imagine that anyone else would be able to feel the subtle shifts in the atmosphere as his mood turns. Or maybe, as she’s been silently suspecting for the last few days, the kid and his force sensitivity has something to do with it. Can the pair of them unintentionally play off the Child’s abilities due to their bonds with him? Is that even a possibility? She doesn’t have the time to dwell on it now, though she does note that she’s incredibly relieved to find that the kid isn’t with Mando.

The Mandalorian’s helmet shifts a fraction, towards Tyrlan and then towards her, languishing upon a stranger’s bed. For a moment, her stomach dips. Does he think she’s lured him here, tricked him? It’s what she would think, if she’d found herself in his boots. But for some reason he seems to trust her, for he steps towards her, fingers twitching towards his holstered gun, as if preparing to shield her. 

“Welcome, Mandalorian,” Tyrlan says in that effortlessly smooth voice of his, splaying his hands to indicate the room around him. “I apologize if the quarters are a bit tight. Four people is a bit of a stretch for rooms in this establishment.”

While Ash and Tyrlan have been dancing around each other with false pleasantries and scarcely disguised mistrust, Mando is having none of it. His helmet turns towards Tyrlan again, and when he speaks, his voice is a flat, modulated baritone. “What is it that you want?”

Tyrlan’s cheshire grin is wide and bright, like the flash of Sansil’s teeth the moment before he pounces upon prey. “Trust me, friend, I have no nefarious intent. I had no intentions of encountering Ashmire here, so you must imagine my surprise when I found her skulking through the streets with a Mandalorian and an infant in her company. I’d never anticipated that I’d see her again, after the Guild’s downfall and Kassam’s demise.”

The name rips through her like shrapnel, her breath catching agonizingly in her throat. Mando’s head tilts a fraction in momentary confusion, and Tyrlan’s sharp eyes don’t miss the movement. They glitter like emeralds as they move from Mando to Ash and then back again.

She’s struggling to control the whirlwind of her thoughts, struggling to rip herself away from the memories that drag themselves from the graveyard of her brain, stamping painfully upon her resolve – just as Tyrlan intended. She blinks hard, her fingers dancing a nervous rhythm across the bedsheets. 

“Oh,” Tyrlan murmurs, deceptively contrite. “I assumed she would have told you…”

“About the Thieves Guild that I called home for several years,” Ash interjects, her voice somehow unwavering despite the inferno burning within her ribcage. “The Guild that _we_ called home, I suppose I should say. Tyrlan and I are two of the few survivors. The leader…” She trails off for a moment, a fraction of an instant that Mando doesn’t miss before she charges on. “Kassam. He perished when we were betrayed.”

“This doesn’t seem like a simple matter of old friends catching up to me,” Mando points out stoically.

“Perhaps because none of the survivors are sure of who, exactly, was the serpent that caused ruin,” Tyrlan says mildly, shrugging. “Can you fault me for being cautious?”

“No,” Ash answers automatically, no longer able to control her curling lips. “Nor can you fault me for being mistrustful when a man I haven’t seen in years takes it upon himself to corner me and pull me aside.”

“Ah, Ash, you wound me.” Tyrlan’s hand goes to his heart; Ash doesn’t miss how Mando tenses at the movement. “We were akin to friends once, weren’t we? I thought you’d like to know that you’ve had your fair share of people sniffing after you in the wake of your disappearance.”

A flash of a face, lightly weathered, with a shock of white-blonde hair slicked carefully away from pale eyes. She recoils from the visual, assuring herself that it cannot be _him_ , that it could be a handful of people whom she’d crossed over the years. “Like who?” 

The question burns.

Tyrlan shrugs. “Never the same men, though always the same questions. Can’t possibly begin to say who they worked for. They were careful. Close-lipped.”

“And _that’s_ why you surprised me in a cramped corridor, weapon drawn?”

“How could I possibly have known how you’d react?” 

Ash hears the words that he doesn’t say: _how could I have known that you wouldn’t attack me, had you been the traitor?_

“All the same,” Tyrlan continues, “that’s not the only reason I decided to make myself known to you. There’s been talk on other planets of the child that you travel with, as well.”

The Mandalorian’s shoulders straighten abruptly, a growl escaping his helmet. “What are you talking about?”

The Jawa titters under his breath, and Mando levels Thazze with what Ash can only assume is a vicious glare. The creature murmurs something, though the silence that follows makes it apparent that Mando doesn’t speak Jawaese well, if at all.

“He says that we must have been living under a rock if we haven’t heard,” she supplies, using her palms to push herself up into a cross-legged position. “Which is, of course, entirely unhelpful.”

“Typical,” Mando snorts, and Thazze fires off another brazen retort.

“Come now,” Ash murmurs, tilting her head. “I doubt you’ve ever been that close to a woman, much less his mother.”

Thazze quiets at that.

“Peace,” Tyrlan implores, shaking his head. “The topic at hand is straying. Word on the streets is that there is someone who seeks a Mandalorian and a child – someone different than who seeks you, Ashmire, to be sure. Someone who escaped a brush with death and swore vengeance.”

It’s Ash’s turn to be baffled, though it seems as if the Mandalorian knows precisely who Tyrlan speaks of. 

“Moff Gideon?”

“The very same.” Tyrlan looks infuriatingly amused now, brushing his auburn hair aside as he looks between the pair of them. “It seems as if the most elusive beings in the galaxy have found their way to one another, without ever even knowing it. I do not envy either of you.”

“You should. I mean, have you looked at me?” Ash sports a spectacular pout as she rises to her feet, making a show of stretching as her fingers drift along the hilts of her hidden daggers. “Is that all you’ve pulled us aside for, then? To give us some cryptic warning that everything isn’t sunshine and glitter?”

“You haven’t changed a bit.” Tyrlan sighs, his gaze still bouncing from her to her companion, calculating and too sharp for comfort. “Our history demanded that I warn you…or perhaps that was simply my own principles. I have done what I thought was right; your future resides in your hands now. You are free you go, unless you wish to stay and consume the remainder of my lunch.”

Defiantly, Ash reaches to pop another cube of cheese into her mouth, wiping her palms upon her breeches as she saunters to Mando’s side, reaching up to tap one of his pauldrons. “Excellent. Well it’s been wonderful catching up with you, Tyrlan, but I’m afraid we must be going.”

Mando is moving before she’s even finished speaking, one hand still resting upon the grip of his pistol as he reaches to yank open the door. Tyrlan’s gaze tracks her as she pads across the flooring, but just after Mando has slipped out of the room, his voice halts her in her tracks.

“Ashmire.” The tone of it is…strange. Lacking his usual cutting edge. She turns partially towards him, glancing over her shoulder at the man staring daggers into her spine. “Was it you?”

She bristles; she can’t help it. It’s as if his words have materialized into lethal claws, digging into her flesh and shredding through bone. Her lip curls unintentionally into a snarl, and she practically spits her reply. “The fact that you have to ask means that we were never near to friends at all.”

Her lungs are tight and strained when she lopes into the hall, hurrying to catch up with Mando, whom has thrown open the door to his own room. She follows him inside, shutting the door behind her as he strides to the floating bassinet, opening it to reveal an angry Child. Satisfied, the Mandalorian begins gathering the few items he’d brought from the ship, never glancing towards her, even when he speaks.

“Once I’ve finished with my things, we’ll go to get yours. We’re leaving.”

She doesn’t argue with him; she simply moves to the bassinet, lifting the Child and cradling him in her arms as he grunts with dissatisfaction.

Neither of them speak again, even as Mando finishes and they move to her room so that she can gather her belongings. They slip immediately from the establishment afterwards, and Mando’s shoulders don’t relax as they pass Tyrlan’s room, as they navigate the streets, as they board the Crest.

Only once they’re leaping through space does he at last acknowledge her where she’s curled herself into the co-pilot’s seat, the kid half-dozing on her lap. Mando turns his chair towards her and places his gloved palms on the armrests, his helmet dipping a fraction.

“What the hell was that?”

“I don’t…” Ash frowns, and she hates how vulnerable she feels suddenly beneath his gaze. She tries to summon her usual swagger – fails. There is nothing but confusion and loss summersaulting in her brain, unexpected and as fresh as the day she’d felt it. “I didn’t know what he…I…”

Before she can even begin to finish one of her many sentences, the Child stirs. His ears splay back against his skull as his dark eyes regard her as he shrinks into her, as if to escape the stifling mood of the room. His little hand shoots upon, fingers brushing against her cheek, and Ash gasps as the room before her transforms.

She’s no longer in the Crest, but instead is watching as a speeder darts across the barren earth towards a familiar ship, two others approaching fast. The kid is clutched in the arm of a Ugnaught, the pair of them desperately racing forward as a commlink crackles loudly, the voice relayed ripped away by the wind. The other speeders are bearing down upon the Ugnaught, flashes of white armor caught by the sun as they circle and aim, firing upon the bike and sending it spinning. Again and again they fire, even as the Ugnaught rolls and the Child wails, and she watches as the horrifying scene unfolds.

The Ugnaught is still, _too still_. The Child’s screeches reach a crescendo as the Stormtroopers approach, ripping him from the body that he’s protected by. And as the Child’s screeches momentarily pause for him to draw in a breath, she hears the sound of a panicked voice over the commlink.

A voice that she heard, just as afraid and agonized, when she’d been cornered by Tyrlan and unable to respond.

Her heart shudders as the cockpit of the Crest slams back into focus around her.

“Oh.” She’s frozen in her seat, Mando’s gloved hands having yanked the Child from her grasp. Her arms and hands are still stuck in a cradling motion, though her gaze flies to Mando’s helmet.

“What did he show you?” Mando demands roughly.

A name came to her, just before the Child was taken from her grasp. “Kuiil.”

There’s a silence so heavy that it seems to physically press upon her, and Ash doesn’t know what to do. She can still feel the Child’s sadness, can feel the pain that he’d sensed in Mando in the days that had followed Kuiil’s death, can feel the familiar panic that had coursed through Mando – and subsequently the kid – when history seemed to repeat itself with their commlink session gone wrong. 

And Mando…he turns away abruptly, back to her as he growls, “Not Kassam?”

It’s not jealousy in his tone. It’s something else – vulnerability. He doesn’t like that the Child has shown her this awful moment that still haunts him, so he preys upon the similar pain he’d seen in her eyes earlier when Tyrlan had mentioned the Guild leader. 

Ash reels. Everything inside of her is raw and painful, and she lets her hair shield her face like a curtain as she draws into herself. Still, she doesn’t speak immediately. She rises, steps out of the cockpit to rummage in her hastily discarded bags, from which she plucks a stuffed frog toy. Clutching it to her, she turns and steps back inside of the cockpit. Mando and the Child both watch as she sinks back into her seat, watch as she leans forward to offer her surprise gift to the kid. His little green hands reach out to take the frog, cradling it close to his chest as he gazes at her with massive eyes. 

“Kassam was…” She starts and then breaks off, unsure. Struggling still to separate reality from what the Child had shown her. “The Guild…it was my home. They were my family. Even Tyrlan, though you saw how the betrayal racked us all. Ripped the survivors apart with uncertainty. We loved Kassam. We loved the Guild. When it fell…”

 _We loved._ That’s what she’s said, but she knows how it sounds judging by the way Mando’s body shifts. _I loved._

A memory flashes. Kassam, his grin so wide that it seemed to take up half of his face, his ebony hair rustled by the wind and his blue eyes squinted. Kassam, reaching for her, his long, pale fingers splayed against her spine as he pulled her closer. Kassam, lifeless and unmoving, his glassy stare vacant as he swung from the rafters of their secluded hub. 

She can’t speak. Mando fills the silence for her. He’s abruptly telling her of he and the Child’s origin, how he turned the kid in and then returned for him, the subsequent months after. He’s telling her of his encounter with Moff Gideon, who the man is, how horrible it is that he still breathes. 

By the end of it, the silence is so heavy that it could suffocate.

“Now you know who’s searching for me,” Mando says, not even blinking as Sansil comes sauntering into the cockpit, leaping onto Ash’s laps. Her hands reach for the cat automatically, pulling his purring body close to hers. “Who’s looking for you?”

Another torrent of memories; she thinks that she might be bleeding internally. Nothing else could describe this pain, this fear. 

And still she lies.

“I don’t know,” Ash whispers, clutching her loth-cat close to her bosom. “But whoever it is, it can’t be good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tyrlan may have seemed to come out of nowhere and to have not been present for very long. If it seems as if he didn't have much of a purpose, I can assure you that you'll be seeing him again in the future. Also, I apologize for the very long wait after a cliffhanger. My muse spiraled, but it's recovering. <3
> 
> Also - would you guys be interested in me putting together a Spotify playlist of songs that heavily influenced/went along with this story? It will be a bit before I can share it, because one song in particular is especially for the climax of this fic. But if you guys are interested, once this is winding down I can share it.


	8. The Realization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the wait <3

_Insane, inside the danger gets me high_  
_Can't help myself got secrets I can't tell_  
_I love the smell of gasoline_  
_I light the match to taste the heat_

“I have a puck.”

Ash is entirely unprepared for the force in which Mando slaps the device down on the table, her body jolting as if her skin is trying to depart from it. The child “ehh”’s angrily on her lap, irritated by the sudden movement of her body as she lurches backwards, clutching him close and abruptly separating him from his dried meat and broth meal. 

“ _Maker_ ,” Ash hisses, trying now to comfort the squirming kid as the Mandalorian looms above them, visor tilted down towards her. Its been over a week since they departed from Thurra, and things between she and Mando have been…tense, to say the least. “You’d better have a puck for Moff Gideon himself with _that_ reaction.”

He twitches at the mention of Gideon but says instead, “No. Another high-profile target, though.”

“If we’re not in immediate danger, maybe trying avoiding scaring the shit out of me and your kid,” Ash gripes in return, trying to settle herself back comfortably at the table while the Child squirms and grunts. “Where to this time?”

Mando stands stiffly in front of her – too stiffly. This last week has been uncomfortable and grating, making her wonder at every turn if he intended to simply drop her off on the nearest planet. He hasn’t yet, but that doesn’t say much. They speak only when they need to, and even then their conversations are tense. Strained. Whatever happened between them that night seems to have ignited a raging inferno, which burned brightly and then quieted, but still smoldered. She could not forget the way that Kassam’s name had sounded on his lips, accusatory; he could not forget the way that his intuition screamed that she had not told him the truth.

“Hoth.”

Ash knows it immediately – home to snow and ice, surrounded by numerous moons, home to terrifying creatures. She gives a curt nod of her head in response, keeping her opinion of traveling to such a dangerous location to herself. Which is all the wiser, considering he does not ask or seem to care about her opinion; he turns with an abrupt snap of his cloak and retreats into the cockpit, oblivious to her scowling.

The puck remains on the table before her, blinking, mocking. She ignores it, instead working to finish feeding the child before tucking him safely away in his bassinet with Sansil keeping guard.

But that leaves her in a predicament: now she has nothing to do.

She supposes she can run diagnostics on the parts she’d replaced after her trip to the market in Thurra and her subsequent repairs. It’s as good a plan as any, and she devotes herself to it. She finds nothing wrong, and so she tests again, and again, until it is clear further testing is just a waste of her time. Then, with a hefty sigh, she resigns herself to showering and…

And what? She’s at a loss.

Against her will, or so she tells herself, she has noticed that the Mandalorian has not eaten today. Chewing at her lip and ignoring the feeling in her gut telling her to disregard what she intends do to, she moves to the small kitchenette to prepare a dried meal for him. She’s not entirely sure what it is – some form of meat, several re-hydrated vegetables – but it smells decent enough when it’s done, and she cradles the tray in one arm as she pads towards the cockpit.

The soft whir of the door opening announces her presence; still, he does not turn. She can see his broad shoulders peaking above the pilots seat, can see his monochrome helmet, and she pauses in the doorway. For a while, neither of them move.

And then his helmet tilts, just a fraction, towards her. She takes it as an invitation and moves forward.

“I thought…” She trails off as she comes to circle partially around him, unsure in that moment. And truthfully, she hates it. When was the last time she was this awkward? This stunted and strange? Why does she feel the need to experience shame, when she’d only done what she always had by hiding what was necessary from him? Her lips pull into a small frown as she wars with herself.

He spares her from further internal torment with a, “Thank you.”

His hand reaches back, and as she places the tray in it, his gloved fingers accidentally brushing hers. The feeling is…surreal, for some reason. As if this accidental movement has granted her a rare glimpse beyond _him_ , the armored creature who seems so very like a machine at times.

After she’s passed him the food, she turns to leave him in peace. But then his voice grates out, strained but sincere.

“I apologize.”

She freezes; the words rip through her. “For?” She barely manages to grit through her teeth.

“Thurra.” He say no more, as if he is not willing to, or perhaps can’t. And then: “If you’d like to sit outside of the cockpit while I eat…”

A heartbeat passes. Two.

And then her legs are moving, carrying her out of the cockpit, her body slouching down into a seated position. Through some control of his, he closes the door three-quarters of the way. She could turn, if she wanted to ruin him; could peak through the crack and put him to shame. But she doesn’t. She simply sits there as the sound of his helmet disengaging reaches her, the hiss seemingly too loud to her ears.

She can hear clink of his knife as it cuts through the meat, can hear the wet squelch of re-hydrated vegetables slicing. She tucks her knees close to her and wraps her arms around them.

“I’m sorry, too,” she says, voice quiet. The scraping of utensils stops, telling her he heard. “If I made things difficult for you. I didn’t mean…”

A scrape again, a snort. “You didn’t.”

He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He doesn’t know what ties she has.

“I’ll complete this job,” he’s saying, oblivious to the roaring in Ash’s ears. “And we’ll have enough credits to last us for a while. We’ll keep searching for the child’s people.”

The job. That’s right. She’d angrily snatched the puck off of the table when he’d slammed it down earlier. She removes it from her pocket without looking at it, flipping it between her fingers. She hears movement, and then the hiss of his helmet sealing to him again. He tells her that she may enter the cockpit and she does, robotically, as if her body knows something she doesn’t.

She settles into the co-pilot’s chair. It does not take long for Sansil to find her, having left the sleeping child to leap onto her lap, purring as he settles into Ashmire. Her fingers bury themselves in his fur for comfort.

She’s still toying with the puck, before realizing Mando might need it. Leaning forward, she offers it to him. From his peripheral he sees it and reaches for it without turning his helmet, their fingers again brushing.

He takes it and leans forward to press it into a section of his ship’s hardware. A moment later, a hologram flickers to life, showing the face on the puck.

Ash’s fingers tighten suddenly in Sansil’s fur. The loth-cat growls underneath his breath as she manages to pry her fingers apart.

There, on the Mandalorian’s screen that materializes before them, large and jarring, is the face of her father.


	9. The Disappointment

_Feels like we're on the edge right now_  
_I wish that I could say I'm proud_  
_I'm sorry that I let you down_  
_All these voices in my head get loud_  
_I wish that I could shut them out_  
_I'm sorry that I let you down_

_You need to tell him. You_ have _to tell him._

She grits her teeth, a welcome relief from the previous hour she’d spent gnawing at the skin of her lip. It was raw now, sensitive, tasting of iron.

_He already doesn’t trust you; if you don’t, he’ll never forgive you if he finds out._

She curls in tighter around herself, the stiff mattress beneath her groaning quietly at her movement. Her hands are balled into fists, and she admittedly finds comfort in the bite of her nails against the rough skin of her palms. 

_Do you really want to ruin another good thing? Isn’t it time to break the cycle?_

Ash snarls at this; her thoughts have taken on a tone she doesn’t like, not at all, and she finds herself sitting up abruptly, her pillow falling to the floor with a soft thump. Her skin feels too tight and itchy, her very bones restless enough to drive her to her feet. She stands in the sparse space of her quarters, breathing hard as Sansil opens one eye to blearily peek at her from her bed. Everything inside of her feels pulled taut, has since she saw her father’s face on that screen, and she’s aching, every place that he ever inflicted pain upon her throbbing – 

“ _Stop_ ,” she gasps to herself, staggering towards the door. She wants to run, to feel the same burn in her legs that she felt that day when she was fleeing across the dunes towards Mos Eisley, desperate and biting. There’s no room for it on the Crest though, so she finds herself stumbling into the hallway, using her palms to scrape against the walling quietly as her eyes struggle to adjust. She knows well enough about the ship to know, roughly, where she is and where she’s going. When her bare toes prod at the ladder that leads to the main deck, she’s not entirely surprised.

She descends as quietly as she can, trying to ignore the way her heart is racing so painfully in her chest, threatening to burst from beneath her ribcage at any moment. It feels as if she can’t get enough air, as if she hasn’t been able to from the moment she’d seen _him_.

Her feet lead her automatically towards the cockpit, the doors sliding open at her approach. Immediately she’s greeted by the sight of the galaxy, stars and nebulas and planets, the view from the sprawling windows making the cockpit feel more spacious than it is. It’s not open air, but it’s enough for her to sink down to her knees, pressing one shoulder hard against the back of the pilot’s chair as she inhales raggedly.

She’d been close, _so close_ , to telling Mando about her father the moment his image had materialized before her. Her mouth had parted, dry as a desert, and her tongue had moved to form the words. But she’d frozen suddenly, memories overtaking her so swiftly and viciously that she’d been rendered speechless in her terror.

Because his face had made it rip through her anew, fresh as the day it had happened – and after a similar effect had occurred from hearing Kassam’s name just a week prior, Ash felt…empty. Bled dry. There was nothing within her that could safely tolerate the conversation that would come to pass.

She hadn’t anticipated this when she’d left Mos Eisley with the Mandalorian and the Child. Hadn’t known that she would be faced so abruptly with the very same past that she was running from. She’s flooded with memories – memories of her mother, whereabouts unknown and her fate fearfully anticipated; of her father, smiling coldly as he drug her by her hair towards the precipice of a cliff; of Kassam, smiling at her gently and lovingly the night before she found him hanging.

This is not what she signed up for; a sob escapes her at the realization.

“Ash?”

She startles – she hadn’t heard his approach. She turns partially, unbound hair falling in curtains around her, obscuring part of her vision as she peers up at him. He stands above her in the doorway, clad in his helmet as usual, though the rest of his attire is unfamiliar. He wears a black cotton tunic that clings to his chest and frames his biceps, and a pair of similarly colored trousers. Socks clad his feet, but she can see his hands, can see the golden-brown hue of them, the veins that flow –

It’s all too much. Everything is too much.

She wants to shy away from him as he approaches, but she can’t. Mando kneels before her, just a hands breadth away. His clothing is disheveled, as if her stumbling in the halls had woken him and he’d come immediately. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her; she’d been strong for so long, scrappy and witty and fierce. And then he’d come along, and everything had gone to shit.

He reaches out slowly, tentatively, as if he’s unsure of his own movements. They’re slightly jerky and disjointed, like he’s not used to comforting someone else. She wants to move back, to offer a wide grin and a spitfire remark that assures him that she’s fine, just fine, but she can’t bring herself to.

His hand is hovering an inch from her shoulder now, so close she can practically feel the warmth. She’s a frozen creature, waiting with baited breath for him to thaw her. She can’t see his expression, but she can imagine what it must look like as he tilts his head minutely, silently asking for permission. She does not deny him, and his fingers close the distance between them, ring finger and pinkie against her shoulder blade, thumb against her collarbone. It’s meant to be a comfort, but she is suddenly wracked by guilt for what she has not indulged. She’s putting his life, the Child’s life, at risk by keeping them in the dark.

She needs to tell him about her father. Needs to tell him who, exactly, he is.

Her gut seizes and roils at the very idea.

“Mando…” His hand feels heavy against her, and her voice trails off weakly. How can she begin to vocalize everything that’s happened to her? He’s silent, helmet titled towards her, waiting for whatever it is she needs to say. And she knows what she needs to tell him, but her voice seems to freeze in her throat, until she simply tilts her head forward so that it brushes his helmet slightly, so slightly.

He jolts; she doesn’t know what for. She pulls back and smiles, forcing her features to take on her usual confident tilt as she stands and straightens. Tomorrow, she vows, she will be her usual self again. No matter the cost.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

They’re two days away from Hoth when the Crest shudders violently, throwing Ash’s balance off as she stands in the kitchenette, preparing the kid’s lunch.

She stumbles, flails, arms flying out to grip the counters while narrowly avoiding upturning the wooden bowl full of broth. A moment passes, two, and then the ship gives another vicious shudder that sends her sprawling upon the hard flooring.

The Child is wailing somewhere in the next room, Sansil is hissing, and Ash is cursing as she tries to pull herself to her feet. The Crest lurches beneath her, and she nearly loses her footing again before she rights herself, pulling herself out of the kitchen to survey her surroundings. 

The Child peers at her from his bassinet, ears splayed and face scrunched. She lunges towards him, her hands frantically mashing at buttons and managing to close the protective barrier above him just as the ship lurches wildly to one side. She goes flying, shoulder smashing painfully into a wall, the audible crunch and accompanying pain making her gasp. 

She’s dizzy, ears ringing, but she can hear Sansil’s yowling somewhere near. She opens her eyes, vision tilting, to find the lothcat claws-deep in a wooden box of supplies several feet from her, hanging on for dear life. The ship rights itself again and begins to make a humming noise that she is not at all comfortable with. Despite the fact that she is listening to the internal mechanisms of the Crest, Ash does not dare move further; her shoulder is smarting horribly, and she isn’t sure where Mando is.

And that’s when it happens – a sudden, horrible impact that sends her body somersaulting again, smashing painfully into the Child’s basinet, the metal encasing knocking the wind from her stomach where she collides with it. Her arms wrap around it unbidden, the jolt seeming to rattle her bones and steal the life from her lungs. 

She’s gasping pitifully in the aftermath, and when a strong hand grabs her by her bicep, she panics. There’s nothing she can do but squirm as the hand lifts her partially, rolling her onto her back. She’s swimming in and out of consciousness, and it takes her an embarrassingly long moment to realize she’s gazing up into Mando’s visored face.

She must have been out for a decent moment, because he has a wailing kid cradled in one arm as his helmet peers down at her. For a long, long moment he’s silent – but then he begins gesturing at her with his hands, and she realizes that the impact has briefly damaged her hearing.

Gasping, she sits up; is she dying now? What if she passes without ever having told him the danger of her father, and Mando waltzes into the situation blindly? What if, what if –

She’s hyperventilating, and Mando’s press on her shoulder is firm. It’s gloved this time, much less gentle, until she’s laying prone again. She’s still gasping raggedly, and it takes a long time for her to calm herself, for her hearing to return. When it does, it comes in snatches.

“Calm – ‘s fine. We crashed – engines malfunctioned – not far from Hoth. Somewhere clo – have to be on guard.” 

She takes in this information desperately, rolling onto her stomach with a hard wheeze. She sees a flash of fur, and then Sansil is crouched before her, tail flicking with agitation. Relief roils through her, and all she sees is black.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

Ash comes to slowly.

She’s cold – not bitterly so, but enough to make her aware of her fingers and toes. She’s wrapped snuggly in something, so tight that it restricts her movements. She wiggles and immediately regrets it; the pain that surges through her shoulder and ribcage is immediate and harsh. She gasps, and a moment later a hand reaches out to gently brush her brow, stilling her movements.

“Be still,” comes the modulated voice of Mando. It takes a moment for her vision to clear, but then she sees him, crouched near to her in the midst of a damp cavern. There’s a pitiful fire crackling before them, barely serving to warm the space. The Child’s bassinet is closed firmly in one corner, Sansil curled beneath.

“What…?” She can barely form the words.

“The engines malfunctioned not far from Hoth. We’re two planets away. It’s just outside, but I can’t get it started, and I can’t guarantee our safety inside the ship if I can’t even get the doors to close - or the heating elements working,” Mando’s voice informs her. She tilts her head back slowly, _slowly_ , to see him sitting near. “You took quite the beating. What hurts?”

“Shoulder,” she replies immediately, and then, “ribs, a bit. Are we safe?”

Her eyes flick towards the Child and Sansil; Mando doesn’t miss it.

“For now, yes.”

She hums, low and dry in her throat. It will have to do.

“Ash,” he says, and she realizes for the first time in some time that he’s calling her by her preferred nickname. He sounds grim. “Your shoulder is dislocated. I need to set it.”

She grits her teeth, nods. His gloved hands on her feel so different from his bared ones.

He sets his jaw and presses, hard. A scream leaves her, and it is not the last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know it's probably a bit frustrating for you guys to see the way Ash is behaving by not being truthful with Mando. Remember that she's had a LOT of trauma in her past that we have not explored quite yet, and it's very difficult for her to open up about it. Bear with me - you'll learn all about it and her reasoning soon enough. <3


	10. The Wakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovelies <3
> 
> I didn't get a whole lot of reception regarding the last chapter; I hope that it was okay! I know this is a super slow burn and the chapters might be shorter than desired, but I'm battling with my muse these days and I'm trying to tell Ash and Mando's story in a way that feels organic to me. I hope it hasn't become tedious or boring D;

_Can't help myself, got secrets I can't tell_  
_I love the smell of gasoline_  
_I light the match to taste the heat_  
_I've always liked to play with fire_

Ash awakes with a start.

Her skin is flushed, sweat beading on her upper lip and trickling down between her breasts. It’s dark around her, and for a moment she panics as memories slam into her one by one: her father’s face, Mando’s warm palm against her skin, the Crest’s vicious shuddering, a horrible collision, and the pain as Mando grimly reset her dislocated shoulder.

It takes a moment for her breathing to stabilize, and in that moment, her vision adjusts to the dim light of the cave. _Right, the cave._ There hadn’t been enough heat encasing them in the sprawling expanse of the Razor Crest, and starting a fire within the ship was obviously out of the question, so Mando had moved them…here. She’s laid on her back, padded underneath by what seems to be a bedroll and swaddled by stifling clothing, but Ash manages to lift her head a fraction. It’s a shallow cavern she’s in, really; just an inward carving of rocks with an overhang and a narrow opening sheltering her, slightly, from the howling wind and blinding white outside. There’s just enough room for her, a smoldering fire, another deserted bedroll, and the Child’s bassinet –

She gasps. The _Child._ She remembers throwing herself upon the bassinet the moment things went south with the ship, remembers him in Mando’s arms, but – is he unharmed? The bassinet is firmly closed, and though she tries to sit up to reach for it, the dull twinge in her ribs and a sharp throbbing in her shoulder makes her audibly hiss.

Her light hair, unbound, sticks to her sweat-drenched forehead. Once her vision stops swimming, Ash manages to wriggle out of her swaddling, the rush of cool air that washes over her sudden and jarring. It’s not long before her teeth are chattering, but her head feels so _hot_ inside, and all she wants is for the world to stop swimming around her so that she can check on the Child. And where is – 

“Ash?”

“ _Mando,_ ” she chokes out in response, knowing that modulated voice anywhere. She can’t even bring herself to be embarrassed about the relief that bleeds through her tone as he comes into view, crouching down beside her swiftly. “The kid – “

“Is fine. Perfectly fine. So is your cat; he’s in the bassinet, too.” 

Oh, stars. She breathes out a sigh of relief, but it swiftly turns to a growl of indignation as Mando begins covering her with cloaks and blankets again. “I’m _hot_.”

“You have a fever. That doesn’t mean you get to freeze to death just because you’re too stubborn to know what’s good for you right now.” His head tilts down towards his hands, which are busy shuffling with something near the fire. “Ribs are bruised but not broken; they’ll just hurt for a bit. I popped your shoulder back into place. It’s going to be sore for a while, especially if you damaged the surrounding tissue, which you very well might have.”

“If _I_ damaged the surrounding tissue?!” She sounds petulant, she knows, but she doesn’t correct herself. She’s settling comfortably and quickly back into her usual self, eagerly shedding and tucking away the sad, scared little girl she’d been in the hours before the crash, in the _days_ since Thurra. God, how she hates that girl.

He pretends as if he hasn’t heard her. “It was swollen the last I checked, but not terribly so. I went back to the Crest to get bacta for it, and a bit for your ribs, maybe. We’ll need to get you in a sling after we apply it.”

“Can we really afford to waste bacta on these kinds of wounds?”

“Can we really afford to waste time waiting for you to recover, leaving us and the ship vulnerable?” He challenges.

Fair point; she hates him for it.

“The fever,” he continues, sliding into a rhythm, “is going to be a bigger concern. We need it to break. You’re going to have to sweat it out and get down some water as soon as possible. Do you feel like you can drink?”

She opens her mouth to offer a retort but stops. Considers. Her throat is dry and parched, and as far as she can tell, her stomach seems mostly settled. She nods, just a tilt of her head, and he moves away to drag something nearer to him before he settles back in beside her. Near, so near. If it weren't for his armor, she'd be able to feel his heat.

“Okay.” Something about the way his voice sounds, even with the modulator, is…different. Stiff, formal, but also clumsy. And there’s a trace of something beneath it, something she can’t quite pinpoint. “I’m going to have to sit you up and form a sling out of my cloak. Before I do that, I need to put the bacta on your shoulder and ribs. Unless you think you can do it yourself.”

She remembers moments before when she attempted to check on the kid, and the dizziness that overcame her. Gritting her teeth, she shakes her head.

“Alright.” And now the stiffness has abandoned him; there’s something almost _soft_ about his words, his movements, as he tentatively reaches for her. “I’ll be slow and gentle. Let me know if anything…”

He trails off, but he doesn’t need to finish. She nods again.

His gloved hands wrap around her biceps, and he allows her a moment to prepare before he’s tugging her upwards inch by inch. She must have been laying down for some time because Ash’s head immediately begins to swim, and she squeezes her eyes shut as she fights the vertigo. Mando is patient, and it takes some time, but finally he has her upright. He allows her a moment of respite, a moment to breathe, before his fingers are gently hooking underneath the bottom of her shirt.

The leather of his gloves against her skin is…strange. She doesn’t know if she’s hot from her fever or from the sudden flushing of her cheeks as he begins to lift the fabric, the buttery soft pads of his covered fingers whispering against her skin. Against her better judgement she laughs, and he stills immediately.

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Ash manages to get out between giggles. “It’s just…I don’t know. I feel ridiculous. I’ve had my clothes peeled off of me dozens of times – and no, not always in the way that you’re thinking – but here I am, mentally working myself into a frenzy over it.”

And she is. Because though she’s woken up half-naked and bandaged by Motto several times, or by nameless healers who she didn’t even know, or in the bed of someone who took pity on her and offered her safety and comfort, this is different. She and Mando have been so sheltered with each other, so closed off. This feels like an opening, a bridging, and she isn’t sure that she’s ready for it. Isn’t sure that she’s ready for the strange way her stomach clenches as his helmet tilts to one side quizzically.

“I get that it’s uncomfortable,” he says, and truly he sounds like he’s trying to reassure himself. “But contrary to what your fevered body is telling you, it’s very cold here, even with the fire. I need to get you properly cared for and redressed as quickly as possible. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

This time it’s he who nods, and then his hands are resuming the task of gently but efficiently tugging her tunic up over her head. And though she still feels hot, so hot, in her head, Ash silently concedes with his point about the cold. She begins to shiver almost immediately, trying to focus on that rather than the fact that Mando is closer to her than he’s ever been, and she’s in nothing but her trousers and her undergarments. The banding wrapping her breasts is threadbare and certainly not appealing, barely keeping her dignity restrained inside, though she’s not particularly sure why she cares. All the same, hot shame for her state washes through her as Mando begins to peel apart bacta patches. 

They’re silent for a moment, the both of them. Ash is doing her part to pretend like she’s studying the cave as he begins laying bacta patches over her shoulder – though, really, who is she fooling? There’s fuck all to study. In the end, she can’t help her soft sigh of relief as the bacta begins to soothe the tension and pain almost immediately, and Mando nods as he hears it.

“See? Doesn’t seem like a waste of bacta now.”

“It does when you consider how much it cost.”

A snort. “As if you paid for it.”

“I – what – I _never_ ,” Ash dramatically feigns indignation and Mando snorts again, though this time it sounds like he’s scarcely containing a laugh as he begins to carefully apply patches to her ribs. This is good; this is normal. They’re back to their banter, with nary a word said about her dubious mental state over the last few days, of which she’s barely managed to reel in – 

“Ash.”

Oh, no. She doesn’t like the tone he uses. “Hmm?”

He’s ripping apart his cloak with his bare hands before she can stop him, using the spare scraps of it to wrap around her ribs. “Last night,” he begins, and that tells her that she’s only been out for roughly a day, but, “When I found you, in the cockpit. You were…I don’t’…”

He stumbles over his words, uncertain. A part of her can’t stand this – his sudden empathy when his broad hands are currently working to bind her arm in a sling without causing her undue pain. And yet, a different part of her quiets. Waits, with breath baited, to hear what he’ll say.

“You weren’t alright,” he finally settles on, pausing as she hisses when he accidentally stretches her shoulder a fraction too far. Once she stops fidgeting he resumes his work, and when his sigh comes, it’s so quiet that his modulator almost filters it completely. “Look, I get it. There are things that went wrong between us after Thurra, and there are things you’re not comfortable telling me. But you have to understand that I can’t _help you_ if you don’t let me.”

“I wasn’t under the impression that you took me from Mos Eisley to help me,” Ash murmurs. “I thought it was simply to hire me.”

“Yes,” Mando concedes, beginning to help maneuver her back into her tunic – no easy feat, with her new sling. “But you’re a part of my crew now, small and strange though it may be. The kid…my _son_ …he means more than I can explain. So I won’t try to. But if there’s anything – “

“That will put him in danger?” Ash questions, trying to ignore how Mando’s hands linger on her shoulders despite the fact her tunic is back in place.

“No. That will put us, _all_ of us, in danger, then…” He falters, and though she can’t see his eyes through his helmet, she can feel his gaze. Heavy. Expectant. Loaded. “Whenever you feel comfortable with it, if you ever do...just. Let me help.”

Oh, no. Her eyes – they’re doing that thing where they sting at the corners, and her throat is tight, and she’s struggling to even look at him. For a long moment they sit in silence, and then Mando nods as if she’s said something before he reaches out to offer her a waterskin.

“Drink,” is all he says.

Ash takes it and forces a smirk that feels, not for the first time, unnatural on her features. “At least tell me you spiked it.”

“Why in the world would I want a drunk mechanic?” He asks in return as she takes a long swig. 

She almost snorts out the water with her laughter. “Ah, so that’s why you’re trying so desperately to heal me. You’re just worried about the Crest,” she accuses once she’s drank her fill.

Mando shifts away from her just slightly as a muffled, hiccuping cry sounds from the kid’s bassinet. “That’s precisely why,” he murmurs.


	11. The Betrayal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wowow, it feels great to be back writing for this fic again! For those still here with me, thank you so much for your patience. For those new, welcome! :D I am so excited to be picking this back up again and I hope that moving forward, we'll have no more empty muse tanks!
> 
> Forgive any typos. I've read this over but I'm so excited to post it I probably missed some. I'll fix them as I inevitably reread it 10,000 times.<3
> 
> edit: oh, my, the welcome back hits, kudos, and comments have literally brought me to tears. It was so hard for me to write for so long. Thank you guys. It means more than you know after a very trying year where I feared I might never find that little voice inside of me again.

_And I always_  
_Fall a little short_  
_In front of_  
_...you_

For perhaps the tenth time that hour, Ash lets a frustrated growl slip from between her lips.

From his place beside the now-hearty fire, Mando does not look up. He has the Child on his lap, the green youngling half-dozing as Mando rips open a packet of powdered soup, dumping it into a pot he’s taken from the Crest. Another discontented noise escapes from Ash – and again, Mando does little more than add a bag of dehydrated Bantha meat to the broth.

Her next wail of discontent is her most spectacular yet, and she’s proud of it. At last, Mando tips his helmet back and sighs, presumably fixing her with a hard stare. In return, Ash crosses her good arm across her torso and sits back against the cavern wall, brows furrowing and lip jutting out petulantly. On her lap, Sansil stirs but does not wake, unconsciously kneading his claws into the blanket covering her lap.

“You can’t go look at the ship now,” Mando deadpans flatly, and immediately he is met with Ash’s frown.

“Why _not?_ It’s driving me crazy. I need to see what’s wrong with it.” She’d been so exhausted after Mando had wrapped her arm that she hadn’t bothered to question much of what he’d told her. She’d collapsed and promptly fell into a deep slumber as he’d been amid trying to calm the wailing Child. But when she’d woken this morning, stiff and cold, her mind had immediately begun to race regarding the circumstances of their marooned state. She’d tried to stand, determined to make her way to the Razor Crest to properly examine it – but she’d found herself halted by an imposing wall of beskar and steel. She’d yet to find a way to breach it.

“You can see what’s wrong with it when your fever has fully subsided,” Mando tells her, once again. The predictable answer makes her lip curl, though he is so clearly not at all intimidated by her hostile expression. 

“My fever is nearly gone.” And it is. It had broken during the night that she’d spent tossing and turning, drenching the padding beneath her in a restless sweat. “I need to see the ship, Mando.”

“You need to rest.”

“ _I need to see the ship!_ ” It’s sharp and angry and bitter, the domineering bark that escapes her – but she can’t help it. From the moment she’d woken, she’d been agonizing over the facts she’d been presented concerning their crash. She knows that she checked that damn ship, knows that it was in perfectly good flying shape. She’d ran diagnostics on it again and again and _again_ , over and over while she’d been avoiding Mando for days, up until hours before their fall. He’d stated engine malfunction as their reasoning for spiraling, but if there’d been a problem with the engines…how could she have missed it? She’s no Peli Motto, but she’s smart enough to read a goddamn meter. 

She remembers the violent shuddering of the ship before she was thrown askew. She remembers the way the Crest was smooth and then so suddenly not, seeming to surge and falter repeatedly, struggling, as if something had gone wrong abruptly. But _what?_ Anything that would have stalled the ship midair and sent it somersaulting was something she should have seen. 

Despite her outburst, Mando does not respond immediately. His helmet remains tilted in her direction silently, for so long that Ash almost repeats herself. But then he gives a shrug of one shoulder, the arm not holding the kid reaching out to stir the soup. 

“How are you going to determine the cause of the crash?” He asks.

“I – what?”

“The malfunction that happened,” he says calmly. “How are you going to determine what it was?”

She frowns harder at him, sensing she’s being led into a trap but not knowing how to skirt it.

“Razor Crest has no power,” he continues, as if knowing that he’ll get no response from her. “So running diagnostics is impossible. That means you’ll have to inspect the interior mechanisms of the ship manually. Is that something that you can do one-armed?”

Oh. _Oh._ She hates him.

If her glare could cut, he would be eviscerated. 

She doesn’t know why it matters so deeply to her, beyond the simple matter of the fact that it almost killed their motley crew. Perhaps she’s determined to prove to him that she’s useful, not some failure of a mechanic who has no idea what she’s doing.

“I –“ Her voice trails off, and she looks away just fast enough to avoid seeing how his helmet tilts quizzically. “I need to see the ship.”

Silence. Pressing, heavy. And then - 

“Alright.”

Her heads snaps up, barely believing that she’s heard him correctly. He’s looking down at the pot again, stirring it slowly and meticulously. She hadn’t expected anything to move him to agreement, and she’s not entirely sure if he’s just trying to shut her up or if there’s a part of him that understands what she’s trying to say. She’s never been very good at saying what she means, or opening herself up beyond what was absolutely necessary; in this, it seems, she has found a kindred spirit. 

“You’re going to eat a good meal, drink some water, and rest,” he’s telling her. “And then, if you’re doing well later, I’ll take you to the Crest. I’ll work as your hands and your eyes. You’ll just need to tell me what I’m looking for.”

It’s not ideal – how can she know what she’s looking for, when she hasn’t the slightest clue what caused the crash? But though it’s a shot in the dark, perhaps he’ll manage to spot something that helps her, that eases her nagging thoughts. 

Reluctantly she bobs her head in agreement, though she’s not sure he’s looking at her anymore. He plops the kid onto the ground as he busies himself with filling the bowls he’d snagged from the Crest, and the little green creature toddles over to Ash, his hands opening and closing into half-hearted fists as he reaches for her. She scoops him up readily, as if it’s second nature to her now; a moment later a bowl of warm soup is being pressed into her free hand. The Child immediately begins to _ehh_ with interest at her food, but before she can sneak him a bite, Mando whisks him away.

“No you don’t,” the armored man murmurs quietly, settling the kid between his own legs before offering the frowning youngling a small bowl of his own. “She’s got to eat every bite of that.”

Something about the way he says _’every bite’_ makes her stomach clench. She tilts her head a fraction, silky hair falling halfway over one eye as she stares into what she knows are his eyes. And this time, she only knows it due to the sharp pang that jolts through her when his helmet tilts in a similar, almost playful, mimic of her own previous movement. 

“Would you like me to lick the bowl, too?” It slips out before she can stop it, deceptively sweet as she lifts the bowl to her lips, foregoing a spoon to slurp at the contents. The soup is hot, just enough to be slightly uncomfortable, but she doesn’t flinch as she slowly lowers it, licking at her lips. Mando has gone oddly still, his own soup forgotten as the air within the cave grows charged with… _something_.

This is…strange, and certainly not how she thought things would go. Perhaps she was wrong and her fever hadn’t broke; how else can she explain the hot flush that spreads through her, one part embarrassment and one part…

Well. Something else.

She’s the first one to break the silence with a clearing of her throat, though it’s shortly followed by the Child grunting at Mando for a second serving. While the Mandalorian is busy indulging his son, Ash busies herself with downing her soup as swiftly as she can manage. By the time Mando has looked up again, her bowl is empty – unlicked – and she’s halfway through the water he’d given her earlier.

“Easy. Gulping it all down isn’t going to get you to the ship any faster. You’re seeming to forget about the _rest_ part of my conditions.”

“All I’ve been doing is resting since we crashed here,” she points out under her breath, trying her hardest not to sound as crabby as she had up until the moment he’d agreed to take her. His helmet turns towards her sharply, and she throws her hands up in swift surrender. “Okay, okay. I’ll go try to take a nap.” For some reason she doesn’t think he quite believes her despite being unable to see his expression so she stresses, “I promise. I’ll try.”

The helmet dips as he stands, offering her a gloved hand that she doesn’t dare deny. He hefts Ash with silent ease, somehow managing to jostle her sore shoulder as little as possible. She finds herself slightly breathless despite this and allows herself to recover as she leaves against his beskar-covered chest, hauled there by the momentum of his pull. Thankfully, he allows it, not saying a word even as she straightens and makes her way (three-and-a-half steps away, granted) to the little nest of cloaks and blankets Mando has gathered for her and the kid.

Surprisingly, it’s not difficult for her to drift off. Despite her miffed determination to see the ship, her body is tired and recovering; she slips into restless dreams that she’ll never remember not long after she’s huddled down into what little warmth the makeshift bed offers. She doesn’t even feel it when the kid snuggles in close beside her to take a nap of his own, though one arm instinctually drapes across his little body to hold him to her tummy. It seemingly does not take Sansil long to follow. 

At least, that’s where she finds the pair when she wakes up, groggy and confused. She squints up at the ceiling of the cave, her nose cold and – if she crosses her eyes just right she can see – red. Huddling closer under the blankets, she startles only a little when the Child’s hand tugs at the front of her tunic, and the loth-cat’s tail brushes her spine. 

“Well, good…morning? Afternoon? Not night, at least,” she murmurs, her voice low, raspy, and just a bit sweet due to the lingering confines of sleep. “You nice and warm in there?”

The kid’s huge green ears rustle against the cloak covering him, his little _”ehh”_ just as soft and tired as her own voice. It takes a long moment for Ash to remember that she’s presumably only moments away from seeing the Crest; she’s too preoccupied with the wiggling little goblin tickling his way up her side in his effort to free himself from beneath the covers, drawing half-snorts, half-giggles from Ash’s throat. Finally he emerges into the light, throwing the blankets off of Ash in the process, her hair falling wild and tousled across her face.

She purses her lips and blows at a strand as she crosses her eyes, which sends the kid into a riot of hiccupping chortles. Ash grins, reminding herself to sit up carefully and stretch even more gingerly than that, testing the pain in her shoulder. Present, and a little stiff from sleep and the cold, but it’s not horrible. She’s gently massaging it with her fingers when she happens to glance up and see Mando huddled by the fire, watching her.

 _How long’s he been doing that?_ She wonders, trying not to flinch with embarrassment remembering her silly antics with the Child. If he thinks she’s utterly ridiculous, though, he graciously doesn’t say so. He only offers her a cup of water when she manages to rise and make her way over near to the warmth of the flames, the kid wriggling away from her lap to toddle over to Mando.

“Are you feeling any better?” He asks as Ash sips at the frigid water, trying not to cough from the shock of the cold needling its way down her throat. Shifting to momentarily place the mug close to the fire, she nods.

“Yeah, I am. Guess you were right.” Her lips quirk at one corner, an eyebrow following the motion. “Don’t get used to that.”

He snorts, the moment fractured and crackling as his modulator struggles to catch the softness of it. “I’m surprised you’re not pestering me about the ship already.”

“Ah, c’mon, you spoiled it. I was just getting to that part.”

“Certainly you must feel better, considering your wit has made its return,” he grouches, standing and bending to snatch his cloak from the bundle of ‘bedding’. He snaps it out several times before turning, sweeping it over Ash’s shoulders and tying it at her throat before she can scarcely blink. She _”ack” _’s and tries to bat him away, but with a brush of his leather-clad fingertips he’s finished and withdrawn, leaving a trail of gooseflesh on her skin.__

__“What about _you_?” She mutters as she rubs at her arms, as if to chase away a chill. She unfolds them only when the kid toddles over to her, buttoned into his warmest clothing already with his little knitted hat in his hands. She maneuvers it over and around his ears, fitting it snugly along them and then grinning at him when he bounces away. _ _

__“I’m not cold,” he informs her, and she squints her eyes at him. He must know what's swiftly coming because he shakes his head quickly. “Even with the armor. I put on several layers underneath while you were out cold.”_ _

__She doesn’t say anything to that, only tugs his cloak snugly around herself before standing to lift both the kid and Sansil into the floating bassinet hovering near the exit to the cave. Mando stamps out the fire, and immediately the cold rushes over Ash despite her covering, making her shoulders hunch forward as if they could shield her._ _

__“C’mon.” Mando’s voice is low and near to her ear, his palm spread between her shoulders to urge her forward. Before she can even consider the idea of protesting at his directing her, they step from the cave and a flash of sheer, blinding white makes her flinch back against his armor. The snow is thick and swirling hard in front of them, and everything - _everything_ \- seems to blaze ivory. She defers to his movements then, knowing that he can see what she cannot with the aid of his helmet. Behind them, the closed bassinet bobs. _ _

__Thankfully, the Crest is not far. It has crashed into the hold of two towering spires of rock, shielding it partially from the frigid wind. Still, snow and ice crust the interior of the ship that she can see as they pass the gaping door, the wind howling through the makeshift little tunnel._ _

__She stops beneath the belly of the ship, gazing up with narrowed eyes at the dull metal. The panels she needs to loosen are on the top, and she turns her head to look at Mando as he steps up beside her._ _

__“So, suppose I can’t shimmy my way up there, eh?” She asks. He shakes his head at her, whether as an answer or out of exasperation, she’s not sure. “Fancy giving me a ride up with those wings of yours?”_ _

__She swirls one finger in the general direction if his jetpack, and if she’s offended him by calling them wings, it’s not a battle he seems inclined to fight. He reaches out quick as a sandviper, hooking an arm around her waist and tugging her to him. Her breath leaves her in a huff, her head tilting back to blink up at him in dazed alarm. She certainly hadn’t been expecting _that_ , nor the way her toes have curled in her boots like little traitors and…and…_ _

__And he’s _laughing_ at her. She can hear it in huffing little exhales that crackle through his modulator, and she slaps at his chest in a scandalized motion that she knows he doesn’t feel. “Mando! Put me down and I’ll give you something to – “_ _

__But they’re surging upwards suddenly, Ash’s voice tapering off into a startled yelp. If Mando laughs harder, he’s fortunate that it’s snatched away by the wind. She swears that she’s going to throttle him when they land._ _

__But when he sits her down gingerly atop the crest, he takes a moment to steady her before turning away, leaving her scowling. He bends to slip his gloved fingers beneath a large piece of paneling, hefting it with ease, sending snow tumbling down over the sides of the ship. Little shards of ice ping against the bassinet still floating below, darting off harmlessly._ _

__“Did you come out earlier to unscrew that already?” Ash can’t help asking, brows raising._ _

__“I did. I looked at the wiring, too, but I’ll defer to your judgement. You know more than I do.”_ _

__She narrows her eyes at him and goes to take a step forward, but he throws his arm out to halt her. “Wait. The hull is iced over. You need to be careful. I know I said I’d be your eyes but…I think I managed to clear out a little space I can lift you down into. It’s still cramped, and you need to be careful. If you start hurting, you tell me and I pull you out. Deal?”_ _

__She blinks at him – not because she disagrees with any of his conditions, but because she’s touched that he’d come up here at some point to loosen the bolts and reorganize some wiring just so that she could satisfy her burning need for answers._ _

“ _Deal_?” 

__“Yes, yes, deal. Wow. Thank you.” She blurts it hurriedly and doesn’t hesitate to let him help her when his hands nestle beneath her armpits and heft her. She tries her damnedest not to squirm, not to twitch, not to breathe – she doesn’t want her weight to be too much for him, he endured the crash too, and yet he seems to know just how to pivot his hips and maneuver her down into the ship so that he appears to not have strained at all._ _

__“Well?” He asks, the word exaggeratedly drawn out as she looks up at him. “You gonna take a look or what?”_ _

__She can’t fight the little smile tugging at her lips as Ash dips her head to survey the area around her. Despite his best attempts to re-twist and path wires, Mando has only been able to clear her a tiny place. She focuses on tucking the arm of her hurt shoulder close to her first, and then with her free hand, Ashmire gets extremely busy._ _

__There’s only a few things that would cause the ship to signal an engine malfunction of such an enormous magnitude, and immediately her gaze is seeking out specific parts and pistons. If she were to lend herself to her love of theatrics, she might even imagine that Peli Motto herself was there leaning over her shoulder, timing just how long it would take Ash to figure out what the hell was wrong. The girl’s lips twitch at the thought, hands reaching and fingers working._ _

__The moment that they brush a section of sloppily cut and re-twisted wiring, she knows it hadn’t been done by her hand or Mando’s. Pausing, she rocks up onto her knees as best as she can, bracing her stomach against her folded arm as she squints down into the terminal._ _

__“It’s a sensor,” she calls, voice ringing out against the metal around her. “Have you seen this? It’s been cut and soldered here to _this_ wire, which…”_ _

__“Does nothing,” Mando confirms from somewhere above her. “I saw it. The sensor is for the oil tank fuel levels.”_ _

__“Have you checked it out?”_ _

__“Not yet. Figured that was something I could help you do.”_ _

__Ash’s head tips back, her gaze settling on his visor as her lips settle into a grim line. Already she’s sure that she has it figured out in her head, but she needs to see it for herself to confirm it. There’s a prickle of irritated heat beginning to crawl up the base of her neck, her cheeks tingling in that way that promises they’ll flush brilliantly before long._ _

__He knows; he reaches down to lift her from her snug little hole, and this time when he carries her, it’s with one of her arms wound around his neck and his arms beneath her shoulders and knees, cradling her. As they launch into the air, Ash’s brain very helpfully decides to remind her that in some cultures, the way that he’s holding her is called _bridal style_._ _

__So, there’s that image she must beat down as they land in the snow near the bassinet. He leaves her there on the ground so that he can rocket up to the underbelly of the ship, peeling apart the panels she directs him to so that he can poke his way inwards._ _

__His expection doesn’t take long, and his voice is grim when he comes to land before her again. “There isn’t any oil.”_ _

__“I’d like to see, please,” she says, and he doesn’t protest. He lifts her – like he had the first time, so that she has one arm and hand partially free to poke around in the ship. When she exhales heavily, he takes them back to the ground once more._ _

__“Drain plug and filter were loosened,” Ash is murmuring, though she knows he’s likely reached the same realization as her. “The oil siphoned off slowly, and when it got too low, the sensor didn’t sound a warning properly. That shuddering we felt, right before the crash? That was the engine locking up. It didn’t have any lube to fuel it.”_ _

__He kindly does not interrupt her detailed babbling, which she feels as if she has to get out, because if she stops talking she might focus on how angry she is. Because she knows that she checked everything as she was supposed to. But suddenly, she needs him to know that, too._ _

__“Mando. That filter and plug were nearly brand new. I installed them myself. I tightened them. I did.”_ _

__“I know you did,” he says simply, but he doesn’t go on, letting her draw nearer to the conclusion herself._ _

__“So when we were docked in Thurra, someone must have tampered with it,” she breathes. And then she waits. Waits to see if he’ll accuse her of it. Waits to see if he thinks she’s been some lying gutter-rat all along, and this was all some part of a ridiculous, hair-brained –_ _

__“That’s what I thought, too.” His voice silences her thoughts in one swift, fell swoop. “I…don’t mean to offend. But do you think that this is something Tyrlan would’ve done?”_ _

__She paces away from him, frowning as she moves to place one hand on the hovering bassinet. It opens a moment later, and the Child stares up at her with huge eyes that seem tinged with concern. She reaches out a hand for him to grasp, and Sansil arches up from his place on the kid’s lap to brush against the underside of her forearm._ _

__Finally, finally, she nods. Because she doesn’t think this is beyond him. Why, though? What could he be playing at, offering she and Mando both advice and warning, only to sabotage the Crest immediately after? And when would he have done it?_ _

__“It would have had to be before we met in his room,” she realizes, and she doesn’t need to glance over her shoulder to know Mando is nodding along already. “So, what? Did he anticipate it would go poorly and fucked with the ship just in case? Why wouldn’t he have told us when the meeting went well, though?”_ _

__So many questions, and absolutely zero answers. Ash sighs, turning to face the Mandalorian. There’s so much going on, so much that seems to involve her past, and she needs to sit him down and talk to him. But when her mouth parts to tell him so, he suddenly goes rigid before striding towards her rapidly. She takes a step back, but he only gently extracts her hand from the bassinet before pressing the button to snap it closed. Then, he presses her behind him and stands with legs spread, shoulders rigid, like some fearsome guardian before her._ _

__“Mando?” She whispers, hardly daring to peek around his broad shoulder. She can’t see…well, anything at all beyond the little gully the Crest is in. Only snow._ _

__“There’s someone out there, approaching fast,” he informs her rapidly under his breath, so quickly and quietly she nearly misses it. “Two of them.”_ _

__For a moment, a heartbeat, she envies the helmet. How helpful it would have been to be able to see her targets as they neared, slipping away before they’d ever even known she was there at all. But then she remembers the rules, the stipulations, the confinement he willingly submits himself so…and she tucks away the unfurling emotion in her chest to examine later._ _

__“Do you want me to hide with the kid on the ship?” She asks, even as the words seem to burn her throat in protest coming out. She wants to stay, to help, to fight if she needs to – but she’s wounded, and she knows that the Child is his priority. But to her relief – or horror? – Mando begins shaking his head immediately._ _

__“No time. Just…”_ _

__But he doesn’t get to finish before two massive, hulking shapes emerge through the swirling gale. Ash’s good arm shifts, her hand instinctively palming the handle of the vibroblade sheathed beneath the layers at her waist. She doesn’t know how much good she is with only one arm, but she’s quick and crafty, and she’s faced shittier odds before, like the time she’d had to figure out a way to wriggle out of the grasp of a slaver with four broken ribs._ _

__From the blinding white emerges two Tauntauns, towering but gentle beasts of ivory who come to a snorting halt a considerable distance away from she and Mando. Their breaths manifest before them in great puffs of white, and from their backs, two riders lift their heavily-padded arms in a hail._ _

__“Oi, strangers, we mean no harm!” An unfamiliar voice calls, carried to them by the furious wind. Mando does not reply, and Ash knows well enough to keep her mouth shut while he handles the situation. “We saw your ship go down yesterday and decided we’d set out to find you once the sun rose. Have you any wounded?”_ _

__It’s impossible to make out the man’s face due to his thick, fur-lined hood and goggles, but Ash has spent enough time studying people to know that he’s older than his companion. He sits with a comfortable ease, while his friend – sitting taller on the saddle but lankier – seems to shuffle nervously, as if he is as unsure of them as they are of him._ _

__Young. Inexperienced. She’d recognize it anywhere. If they do prove hostile, he – or she – will be her first target. Easier to dispatch, even one-armed, and then perhaps she can help Mando with the other. If, of course, he needs it. She doubts he will._ _

__Ahead of her, Mando shifts his weight and calls out over the wind, modulator straining with the volume he must reach. “No wounded. We were on our way to Hoth and experienced an unfortunate malfunction.”_ _

__“That’s not good,” the older one, certainly a man judging by his voice, affirms. “Anything that can be fixed?”_ _

__Mando pauses, his helmet tilting to the side a fraction, the movement so quick she nearly misses it. But then Ash realizes he’s allowing her to field this one, _trusting_ her judgement wholly, and her heart thumps as she clears her throat and parts her lips. “Not with any ease. The engine…I’m afraid it’s going to need to be replaced in its entirety. Most likely.”_ _

__A long, low whistle sounds from the younger one, apparently unable to help…himself? Yes, Ash thinks, if she’s not mistaken. He seems to realize that the task is neither easy nor cheap, though blessedly not uncommon for any mechanic worth their salt. Ash could do it…but she’d need help with the massive engine among other things, namely someone to supervise her to be safe. Despite her usual confidence and bravado, she knows when she is potentially in over her head._ _

__“Well,” the older man says, shifting on his Tauntaun and glancing towards his companion. “Our settlement is half a day’s ride; we can arrive just before nightfall if we hurry. There’s a mechanic there who should be able to help you, I think. If the Mandalorian rides with me and the girl with my son, I believe the Tauntauns could handle our weight with ease.”_ _

__For a long moment, there is silence. Ash sees Mando’s head tilt, figures that he’s glancing down at the bassinet. A heartbeat later and she’s certain his gaze has shifted to her, even though she can’t see it. Helplessly she shrugs; what choice do they have? The engine is shot, and though Mando may have a fancy helmet to guide them, there’s a chance one of them might freeze trying to make it somewhere on foot._ _

__“What are your names?” Mando asks, his shoulders dropping just a fraction._ _

__“My name is Pavan,” the chattier one informs them, “and he is Gavyn. Our town is not particularly spectacular, but our mechanic is skilled despite the low traffic that our planet receives. I’m sure you can imagine why no one bothers to come here.”_ _

__Mando doesn’t respond, so Ash takes it upon herself once more. “You can call me Ash, and him Mando.” But there she falters, unsure. What about the kid? Should she mention him? Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, she glances at Mando, who blessedly takes the lead once again._ _

__“This is my son,” he says simply, opening the bassinet abruptly. The Child blinks up at the Tauntauns in fascination, while Sansil hisses in displeasure at the cold. “And that is her…cat.”_ _

__Then he closes the bassinet, and that’s that. Pavan and Gavyn seem wise enough to not ask questions, and gracious enough to allow she and Mando time to gather what supplies they can from both the Crest and the cave. Pavan assures Mando that scavengers do not bother with their tiny planet due to the conditions, and that the Crest will be safe. With that, Ash approaches the slightly larger Tauntaun that holds the tall boy – Gavyn – and blinks up at him. She can’t see his face either, but she’s not exactly unaccustomed to that by now. She doesn’t want to admit that her arm is injured, but she can’t possibly haul herself into the saddle without help…_ _

__She needn’t be bothered worrying about it. Before long Mando is there at her side, offering her a hand to lift her into the saddle. She accepts without complaint, and he hefts her easily so that she sits in front of the boy, who seems suddenly awkward in posture and positioning as his arms enclose her to rest on the reins._ _

__Mando steps back and his helmet tilts up, one hand lingering on Ash’s calf. When he talks, the words are directed to Gavyn. “Be _careful_ with her. Got it?”_ _

__Gavyn stiffens but does not respond, and Mando squeezes her calf before he steps away to mount up behind Pavan, who is considerably shorter. Ash can’t quite ignore the way her stomach tumbles and tightens as the Tauntauns surge into a run, tucking both hands close to her chest._ _

__In this town, she swears to herself, she will tell Mando everything. And if a wave of fear rises up in her like nausea at the possibility of his anger and abandonment, well…that’s a price she’ll simply have to pay._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's my personal tumblr. Find me and talk to me there <3
> 
> https://n-ulll.tumblr.com/


	12. The Calm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all I just realized I made this man and his son’s names rhyme lmao. Let’s pretend Pavan is pronounced “Puh-vahn” or something ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> As always, thank you so, so much for all of the support. It honestly makes this all so worth it!

_The sky is so clear tonight, it's so calm before the storm_  
_All the stars shine bright, like the world has been reborn_  
_I think I'm in a dream tonight, it's still calm before the storm_  
_But I dream of a rising light, a sign it's time to be reborn_

Pavan is right; the town of Ardwell on the planet of Nilphis is not much to look at. It’s not the smallest town Ash has ever seen by any stretch of her imagination, but it’s certainly…charming. Run down, one might say kindly as their gazes skipped from squat buildings to iced over awnings. She can’t help shooting a skeptical glance in Mando’s direction as she trails along beside him, the closed bassinet floating between the pair of them, so close that it nudges both of their hips when they walk.

Despite how oddly they must stand out against the heavily bundled citizens of Ardwell, they don’t seem to draw much attention; perhaps it is due to the riders who accompany them and their towering Tauntauns, lead behind them. Despite the frigid wasteland harboring the sleepy town, the people seem warm, calling to one another as the strangers pass through their midst. Ash gives them a wide breadth regardless, trying to hide the way her frame desperately longs to curl over and limp.

The Tauntaun ride hadn’t exactly been gentle on her shoulder or still-aching ribs, and she assumes it shows in her gait and pacing – at least to Mando, who’s helmet keeps turning just slightly towards her every time that her expression twitches, unwarranted, into a brief grimace of discomfort and pain. She tries to control the reaction, but she knows it doesn’t matter either way. He knows.

Gavyn, for his part, seems mostly oblivious. Silent during the entire ride and no different now on foot, he instead occupies himself with calling out to his friends that he spies in passing, his youthful laugh ringing frequently out. He struts ahead of her as if he doesn’t quite know how to handle his lanky body, and despite the pain rolling through her, Ash can’t help but think it’s slightly adorable. He’s only a kid with the whole world ahead of him, and so she hasn’t purposefully antagonized him or tried to make his journey more difficult; she knows he’s nervous enough after Mando’s warning, anyways.

And…what was that? Her gaze cuts towards him where he strides behind Pavan, spine straight and shoulders rigid, but somehow still managing to look so _predatory_ , so graceful. There’s an odd fluttering in her tummy, and she glances away just as she sees his head tipping towards her once more. This time when she stumbles, it’s only one-part pain and two parts…something strange. Something she didn’t expect to feel stirring in the pit of her belly when she looks at the Mandalorian. A curiosity, a fascination allowed to spark – not a flame, not even near it yet. But something. A whiff of smoke on the wind.

“How much longer?” Mando calls, a hint of irritation bleeding through his modulator that she wonders if they even notice. 

“The mechanic is just up here,” Pavan informs them over one broad shoulder, gesturing down the narrow alley with a hand. “Once you’ve spoken with him, I’ll assist you with getting your lodging in order.”

He seems to have no interest in filling the silence with unnecessary noise, this Pavan, and Ash is grateful for it. The pain and cold is swiftly serving to make her irritable, and she’s not sure how much longer she can last without taking a breather. She’d expected a quick trip to the ship with Mando and back – not this. But she won’t complain, of course. They’re lucky as hell that someone helpful happened to stumble upon their wreckage.

And true to his word, too. Not five minutes later they come to a halt before a shabby, questionable looking building surrounded by junkyard wreckage. Ash stares at it dubiously, one hand propped on her hip as she carefully draws in large, deep breaths. If Pavan notices her expression, he pretends not to as he ties the Tauntauns to an ice-crusted post. They snort affectionately as he rubs at their great heads, breaths fogging in front of them as they stamp their feet. 

Pavan turns away from them after a moment to approach the door of the establishment, raising a fist to give two quick knocks before pressing inside. Mando steps closer to Ash, his gloved hand brushing the small of her back to urge her forward, with Gavyn seeming content to remain outside with the mounts. Despite her natural caution when entering an unknown location, Ash can’t help the sigh that escapes her when she steps into the mechanic’s shop. There’s a fire crackling heartily in one corner of the cozy room she’s found herself in, and the warmth that fans across her face makes her eyes flit closed for the briefest second. 

Mando stations himself partially inside of the doorway, where he can presumably keep one eye on Pavan and one on the man’s son. The bassinet floats between them, still firmly shut despite the way Ash imagines both the Child and Sansil must resent the enclosure. She turns to watch Pavan as he stops before a wooden table near the fireplace, crammed with all sorts of tiny mechanical parts. The older man peels his padded helmet and goggles from his head and deposits it on one of the half-pushed-in chairs, before turning towards a back room shielded by a dingy curtain. Ash studies him as he does, noting his pale, weathered skin and swiftly graying chestnut hair. He has…a _kind_ face, she thinks, though she knows judging a book by its cover is a dangerous practice where she comes from. 

“Alezac?” Pavan reaches out to sweep the curtain aside, revealing a set of uneven stairs leading upwards, out of Ash’s view. “You home? There’s someone here who’s deeply in need of your assistance.”

The floors above groan, followed by a set of heavy footsteps. There’s the sound of a door opening at the top of the stairs, and a smell so delectable wafts towards Ash that she must take a tiny step back to keep herself from following it with her nose, like a half-starved hound. She always _has_ been a sucker for food; her mother had once teased her that for a girl so small and slender, she ate more than a full-grown Bantha. 

Pavan steps aside as a man thumps down the stairs and ducks through the curtain. He’s not _quite_ human, the tint of his skin just a bit too red, and he’s downright massive. His bald head gleams as he steps forward into the dimly lit room, and where one eye should have been is a gleaming cybertronic, the metal fanning out in an intricate pattern over one cheek. Still, it isn’t enough to hide the grievous scars twisting towards his ear.

The glowing eye _whirrs_ as it studies first her and then Mando, still standing squarely behind her. When he turns to shake Pavan’s hand in a quick greeting, the sleeves of his jacket slides away and Ash takes note of an equally impressive cybernetic hand to boot. _Wonder how much of this guy is cyborg underneath all those clothes,_ she wonders. Not enough, however, to make any real attempt of finding out. 

“Haven’t seen your faces around here before,” Alezac rumbles, crossing his arms over his chest as he props himself against a wall. “Having some troubles with your ship, I’m guessin’?”

“To put it lightly,” Mando intones, at last moving to stand beside Ash – seemingly no longer concerned with Gavyn. “Something happened and we lost a lot of fuel. Engine malfunctioned and we went down not far from here.”

Alezac rubs at his chin, nodding. “Maybe we can get it up and running long enough to get it here. Otherwise, I’ll have to work on it out there, which isn’t exactly ideal.”

“Dunno if you’ll be able to get her running,” Ash chimes in, shifting her weight from foot-to-foot as Alezac focuses on her. “Dry as a bone in there, not a drop of fuel in sight. Don’t know how long it managed to run that way, but I can’t imagine it did anything other than utterly ruin the whole block.”

Alezac whistles, and to Ash’s immense relief, does not question her mechanical knowledge. She warms to him immediately; nothing sets her blood boiling more swiftly than a man whose response to her expertise is to try to stump her with detailed questions, smirking all the while. 

“Mm. No way I can do a complete engine replacement out there, either. Need my shop.” Ash, to her credit, does not dare cast another skeptical glance around the establishment. He’s the only help they’re going to get, and just as he didn’t underestimate her, she will refrain from doing the same. “Maybe I can get the old Utility Tug running, go tow your ship in. It’s been a long time since it’s had to do any heavy lifting, but they’re hearty little things. Real good at lifting way more weight than you’d think, just from lookin’ at ‘em….” He trails off and nods to himself. “I’ll see if I can get it here in the morning. It’ll be too dark soon, and Nima is in charge of the Supper tonight. Lucky you two rolled in when you did; my wife’s a helluva cook.”

“Smells like it,” Ash concedes, before tilting her head towards Pavan. “But, uh. The Supper…?”

“Ardwell’s a very close-knit community,” Pavan explains, tucking his helmet underneath his arm as Alezac busies himself with tossing tools from a towering cabinet into a bag. “Once weekly, someone in our community will cook a large dinner that we sit by the fire and indulge in together. It’s about maintaining and strengthening bonds, unwinding after a difficult work week together…

“Ah.” He shrugs and stops himself, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s all very sentimental when you explain it aloud. It’s simply hot food, a warm fire, and many laughs to be had. You’re certainly welcome to join us.”

Ash tilts her head to the side, glancing up at Mando out of the corner of her eye. His own helmet tilts down towards her slowly, shoulders straightening in a silent warning: _no_. But Ash is determined, and she’s not missing out on whatever emitted the heavenly smell wafting from Nima’s kitchen above them. 

She’ll work on him once they’re in private. Maybe he sees it her gaze, because his shoulders rise and fall an inch, as if in a tiny sigh. Pavan, who has so kindly refrained from interrupting their strange moment, moves past them to the door. 

“Come, we’ll find you somewhere to lodge for the time being. You’re welcome to stay until the repairs to your ship are finished, of course.”

Ash, Mando, and the hovering bassinet trail Pavan outside to find that Gavyn has departed with one of the Tauntauns. His father seems unbothered, simply leading the other animal behind him, along with the cold, weary travelers who’d found themselves marooned on Nilphis.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

There really isn’t much of an inn in Ardwell due to a decisive lack of visitors, Pavan informs them, so they’ll be staying in a loft above his barn. When Mando asks how much they’ll be paying per night, Pavan simply shakes his head as he knocks snow from the lock shackling the barn doors.

“Won’t be any need for that. Not like you’re putting us out or anything. If you really want to do something in exchange, though, perhaps you can keep an eye on the Tauntauns overnight for me. Had a run in with something trying to get after them in the middle of the night a few months back. Would be nice to not have to trek through the snow and check on ‘em after midnight.” 

“Not a problem,” Ash responds automatically as Pavan presses one of the doors inward, ushering them inside. It’s a decently sized barn with several stalls, though only two sport full troughs of water and bulging bags of feed. One is empty, and into the other Pavan leads his Tauntaun, expertly relieving the creature of its tack in record time. Before long, the animal is happily munching away at its dinner as Pavan leads them to a wide set of stairs leading up to a closed door. 

The room is as spacious as the barn area beneath, entirely open and modestly furnished. There are two single-person beds, one tucked against the wall in the corner closest to the window, the other nearer to the door. There’s a washing basin, a tiny little table tucked out of the way, an old wooden counter than serves as a makeshift kitchenette, and a few other small side tables for storage. Though there’s no fireplace, Ash spies a heater just beside the door. 

Pavan bends to press a power button on it, cranking it to a moderate temperature. When he straightens, he gestures to it with a wave. “Should be enough - just turn it off before you leave. I hope the room will suite you fine?”

“’Course it will.” Ash’s shoulder is really throbbing now, and her legs are feeling the strain of hefting her tired body about. “It’s nice, actually. Thank you, Pavan.”

“It was all my late wife’s doing, really. She wanted somewhere for her relatives when they dared brave the snow.” His smile is small, soft – as if the years have lessened the pain enough to allow him to mention her so casually, but never without the assault of memories. Ash recognizes it well. “Now, I’ll leave you to it. Please, consider the Supper. If you decide to come, you can’t miss it. The young ones always get a little carried away with the bonfire.”

“Thank you,” Mando’s modulated voice follows Pavan out of the door, echoing Ash’s earlier sentiments. For a moment he stands motionless, framed by the doorway as he watches the older man retreat down the stairs, head cocked as if considering something carefully. Then, his shoulders lift, and he turns. “I’m going to stop you before you can ev- what are you doing?”

Standing on one half-disassembled bed and stretching up on her tiptoes, Ash casts him a glance over her shoulder. There’s a thick woolen sheet gripped in her hands, and with a bob of her head she indicates the lit sconce on the wall between the beds. “I was going to tie this up here, so when you need to bathe or eat, you can just tie the other end to the sconce over _there_. Give you a little module of privacy – and you won’t even have to worry about me accidentally walking in on you. You get the corner bed.”

“You’ll be cold without that, you know. You should keep it.”

“Nah. There’s two sheets anyways, and the blankets have _got_ to be made outta Wookie fur. They’re seriously heavy.” Beaming, she finishes tying the sheet and gestures grandly to the still neatly-made bed against the wall. Mando’s just standing there silently, his fingers curling and uncurling at his side, as if there’s something he wants to say. Maybe thank her, or…something. But he doesn’t need to thank her for this, ever, and Ash doesn’t let him. She has other things in mind.

“So.” Carefully stepping down to the floor so as not to jostle her ribs, she bats her eyelashes at him. He pointedly ignores her in favor of at last releasing the kid and her cat from their prison, both practically spitting with tiny, adorable fury. “C’mon, you don’t seriously want to stay cooped up in here all night, do you? Plus, didn’t you smell that food? Exquisite.” 

“You’re still hurt, and you need to be recovering. You’ve been through too much today. I should have let you rest before I met with the mechanic.” He sighs, cradling the Child in one arm as Sansil scuttles over to sulk near the heater. The kid is hiccupping and frowning as Mando approaches her, his broad frame stopping just an arm’s length away from her. “Sit.”

Admittedly she was a little preoccupied with noting, not for the first time, the difference in their height and width. She’s caught off guard, blinking at him owlishly until he sighs again – heavier this time – and reaches out to press firmly against her shoulder until she sinks down on the bed.

And oh, bless him. The moment she’s sank down onto the mattress, it doesn’t matter that it’s a bit stiff, because after tossing and wincing on a scarcely padded cave floor, it feels like a damn feather mattress. 

“See?” Mando paces away from her as her eyes snap open – when had she closed them? – to deposit the kid on one of the chairs, before beginning to poke around the kitchenette. “There’s still dried food in the bags. I’ll make something fast, and then you can rest.” 

The way his voice dips lower on the word ‘rest’, a rumble just barely caught and filtered through his modulator, is so comforting that Ash is incredibly tempted to just close her eyes and drift off. But then her eyes open again, and she casts him a suspicious glare. “You stop that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mm. I’m not giving up that easy, shiny. Just like I’m not giving up the opportunity to have a plate of something piping hot and not powdered. If _you_ want to stay cooped up in here, fine, but I’m going and you can’t stop me. Just don’t ask me to bring you anything b- whoa.” 

Mando has whirled to face her, dropping down into a half-crouched position that immediately sets her heart thundering in her chest. She scoots back until her spine is against the wall, the pillow clutched in her lap as if she could use it as a shield against him. 

“I can’t stop you?” He asks lowly. And, shit. Yeah, he could _definitely_ stop her, and she knows it. Not that she thinks he’s serious, that he’d actually tango with her when she’s already in a wounded state (as he so loves to point out)…but that doesn’t mean he’s beyond barring the door with his body, or hogtying her. Not that she’s entirely opposed.

“Okay, maybe you could stop me,” she allows, and she hears him snort in amusement as he straightens. She decides to not let that be the hill she dies on. “But it’s not like they do this every night, and Pavan _is_ letting us stay here for free. Plus Alezac’s putting in a lot of work, having to boot up his towship and all. I mean, I figured it would be the polite thing to do…”

She trails off, casting her gaze away from him. There’s a long silence that stretches between them, broken only by the sound of the kid babbling as he plays with his beloved little ball, somehow smuggled away from the Crest. Then, there’s a sigh longer than any of the _many_ previous ones, and she knows she’s won. 

“Fine. But we’re not staying long, and you’re putting bacta on that shoulder _and_ your ribs before we go.” She opens her mouth to object, but he cuts her off. “That’s non-negotiable, Ash.”

She doesn’t reply, which he knows is an indicator that she won’t argue further. Still, when he bends to begin rifling through one of the bags for bacta, she can’t help hurling her pillow at his head. Without glancing up, he lifts a forearm to bat it away before it makes impact, and to Ash’s immense surprise, it comes sailing back her way. 

She can’t lift her hurt shoulder fast enough to prevent it, so she doesn’t try; she lets it smack her square in the face, and readily accepts her dose of karma without comment as she tries to ignore the way Mando’s shoulders are silently shaking.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

Pavan was right – the bonfire is massive, held smack in the middle of the town. There’s a clearing unmarred by houses and shops, and it’s here that the people of Ardwell have set up their tiny little festival. There’s forty people, fifty absolute max, all of them clustered in groups around the fire or bundled up in one of the many chairs that have been dragged out of homes. There’s a long table set up with a huge pot, several steaming bowls, and a collection of sweetwine and liquor bottles that Ash simply can’t miss.

The moment they arrive, the Child bundled up snugly in Ash’s arms, people part to let them into the throng. There are smiles on the strangers faces and polite greetings that Ash tries to return. Behind her, Mando is silent, perhaps uncomfortable confronted by so many friendly faces that seem not to mind the secrecy of his. Smiling to herself, Ash leads him nearer to the warmth of the fire, purposefully steering them to a pair of clean-cut wooden stumps partially secluded by the flickering shadows. He seems to relax a fraction then, sitting on one of the logs and holding his arms out automatically as Ash offers him the kid.

“I’ll go get us some grub,” she offers, spinning on her heel. “Don’t worry, I’ll grab you something to take back to the loft.” Before she can hear what he thinks of that, she saunters off through the group of casually interwoven people. Some of them are exchanging stories and grinning, while others dance around the fire and laugh, fueled by the clumsy playing of some stringed instrument by none other than Gavyn himself. He looks remarkably like his father, with an ease about him that was absent earlier. He doesn’t seem to be taking himself too seriously, laughing along when he misses a chord and watching his friends have fun. As she passes he glances up and their eyes meet; he shrugs in a ‘what can you do?’ sort of fashion, before resuming his playing. 

There’s a Twi’lek woman stationed behind the table of food, with plump hips, healthy cheeks, and a blue tinge to her skin. Her lekku are loosely bound behind her shoulders, and when she glances up at Ash’s approach, her eyes are as bright and blue as a nebula. She assesses Ash swiftly, silently, before lifting an empty plate and immediately beginning to pile it with mounds of food. Unbidden, Ash’s mouth begins to water.

“You must be Ash, then,” the woman says, dusting one of her palms against her shirt and offering Ash the heaping plate with her other. “Pavan said you might be showing up with your friends. I’m Nima. You want a separate plate for the little one? This is all food we grow and harvest from beneath even the thickest layers of snow; we’ve got plenty.”

“Oh, no, he can eat from mine. It’s enough. Thank you.” There’s some kind of bird’s breast with its crisp golden skin cracking to reveal hints of moist meat beneath, glazed carrots that are oddly white instead of vivid orange, steamed leaves of fresh chard and roasted fall leeks. The smell of it is intoxicating, sweeter and more tantalizing than any perfume. Ash’s stomach churns in heavy anticipation, and it’s all she can do to not rudely begin devouring it right there. “But if it’s no trouble, maybe a wrapped plate for my armored friend?”

“Ah, of course.” There’s a small smile tugging at the corner of Nima’s lips as she piles another plate, before bending to extract a roll of transparent film from a box of various utensils and spices. Pulling it snugly over the plate, she offers it to Ash before holding up a finger and disappearing to the other end of the table. When she returns, she balances a generously filled mug of sweetwine on the wrapped plate. “Come back by before you leave. I’ll give you a bottle so your friend can indulge in private, too.”

Her wink makes Ash’s cheeks warm oddly, but she only nods and ducks her head before carefully maneuvering away, half-cradling one of the plates in the corner of her injured arm. When she has finally made her way back through the crowd after being stopped briefly by Pavan and a cheerfully tipsy Alezac, she plops down onto her chosen log and hums. 

“Well, that was an adventure.” She nods in thanks as Mando reaches to take his plate from her, giving her a moment to situate her own food and mug on her lap. “Looks like our mechanic is enjoying himself. Not that I can blame him. I’d be getting buzzed if I had to do a total engine replacement on a dime, too.” 

“Guess you are anyways,” Mando murmurs, tipping his helmet down towards her mug of wine. She smiles at him sweetly before taking a long sip, sighing at the sweetness unfurling on her tongue. She decides not to tell him about the bottle she’ll be acquiring from Nima just yet; no point getting him all riled up before they’ve even gotten it. 

They sit in silence as Ash wolfs down her food, sighing in contentment at the flavors; there’s a hint of spice to the meat that’s eased by the sweetness of the carrots, and even the Child can’t help squealing with joy when Ash shares a generous portion with him. By the time the food is gone, they’re both full and happy, the kid half-dozing in Mando’s lap. Someone has taken over playing for Gavyn, an older woman who’s fingers dance across the strings much more fluidly. With full bellies and drinks flowing, the people of Ardwell seem to take more to dancing, though there are still plenty who remain on the outskirts. Ash smiles as she watches Alezac, fluid even for such a large man, spin a laughing Nima through the mess of sludge and snow. No one seems to mind their mind-splattered boots, or the chill barely kept at bay by the fire. It could be…nice, Ash supposes, living in a place like this. 

“What are you thinking about?” 

She turns her head to look at Mando, his helmet flickering with brilliant gold patterns, shining reflections of fire. “I was just thinking about how I shouldn’t have judged this place the way that I did. Did you know they grew everything we ate tonight, in this climate? Incredible.”

“It is impressive, isn’t it?” He asks, and Ash isn’t sure that he’s just talking about the food anymore when his head turns back towards the fire, watching people’s expressions flicker between emotions so freely. “Guess we could’ve been marooned in worse places.”

She hums in agreement, watching as Pavan makes his way towards them from across the clearing. Mando straightens a little at his approach, and the Child’s eyes drift open, ears perking in curiosity as the man nods a greeting. “I’m pleased to see you decided to come after all. Did you have enough to eat?”

“More than enough, thank you. If I tried to fit anymore inside of me, I might explode,” Ash informs him, pausing to finish off the last of her wine. “This really is great, you know? You weren’t wrong, how you explained it earlier.”

“I’m glad you see it, too.” At Mando’s silent invitation, Pavan draws an empty chair near and sits. “I apologize that my son has made himself so scarce, though.”

“He’s a kid. No harm done.” This comes from Mando, which seems to momentarily surprise Pavan, though he hides it well enough. “I apologize that we’re not…”

“Participating?” This comes dropped over Pavan’s shoulder from Nima, who’s leading her husband behind her. She waves briefly at Mando, but it’s the kid she’s focused on. Her eyes are lit with a joy that suggests someone who _loves_ children, and judging by the big ol’ puppy-dog eyes the Child is giving the Twi’lek, he knows it. _Real smooth, kid._ “Don’t let us stop you; you won’t find any judgement here. You will, however, find one newly pregnant Twi’lek who’s dying to get her hands on that adorable baby.”

It seems that even Mando can’t resist the charm and warmth that Nima radiates; he hesitates for only a moment, his head tilting towards Ash (who shrugs – she thinks Nima is harmless, but it’s his call) before he passes the Child over. The little green goblin practically purrs with glee as Nima begins “dancing” with him just on the outskirts of the fire, jostling him gently on her hip and leading one of his little hands with hers. Her lekku, free now, seem to be of great interest to him.

“Nothing to worry about, Nima loves kids. She’ll keep ‘im until you ask for him back, I’d wager. But she won’t go far.” Perceptive; Ash watches Alezac as he sits, wondering just how much he sees with that advanced eyesight of his. “We’ll get started on towing your ship bright and early. I fiddled with the Tug for a little bit and I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to get it running tomorrow.” 

“That’s good. Thank you,” Mando says, and Ash can’t help but watch the way he interacts with the men around him. Though he does not offer much verbally, he politely answers each question that Pavan and Alezac aim at him, trying to include the Mandalorian in conversations. He even relaxes enough to begin discussing weaponry with Alezac, who fought through his youth in the war – it only took an eye, an arm, a leg, and a little chunk of his skull as thanks. The metal that lays flush along the base of his skull is a work of art, nearly flesh colored and easily missed. Ash marvels over it from a distance for a time before rallying herself to a much more important task: getting a refill.

She slips off, pretending like she can’t feel Mando’s glare burning holes through her spine. It’s fine; she hasn’t had good sweetwine in a long time, and it’s playing a considerable role in distracting her from her discomfort, easing the pain in her shoulder – or perhaps just muffling it. She tops off her cup and even manages to fit in a few more bites of leeks before she turns and begins her trek anew. 

But everyone is dancing around her, and where’s the fun in just walking like a mindless droid through the fray? She lifts her cup to her lips and takes a considerable pull from it, not wanting to risk spilling it with her movements. Then, carefully so as not to agitate her wounds, she begins dancing through the press of bodies. It’s nothing special, limited as she is by her movement, and she didn’t intend for it to be. She’s really sort of shimmying more than anything, at least until she steps into Nima’s path. The Twi’lek whoops and draws Ash into her little dance-session with the kid, his giggling green body cradled between the girls as Ash laughs and tries not to cover herself in wine. 

She doesn’t know Nima at all – hell, she doesn’t know any of these people, really – but still, the woman has accepted Ash readily, easily. It’s…nice. Ash can’t remember the last time she had another woman to simply co-exist with peacefully, besides her interactions with Peli Motto. And the kid is clearly loving it, his little hands grasping both one of Nima’s lekkus and a fistful of Ash’s hair loosely, his big brown eyes sparkling in the light. 

As she turns Ash sees Mando, still conversing with the two men seated near him – but his helmet is turned towards her, watching her with his son. She smiles at him, a big, goofy grin that dares him to join in, though she knows that he won’t. It’s probably for the best; she’s quickly growing tired and she knows if she doesn’t stop now, she’ll be extra sore in the morning. Carefully extracting herself from Nima, she polishes off her drink and meanders over to Mando. 

“Ready to get some rest?” He asks her, and this time she doesn’t fight him. He stands when she nods, exchanging a swift goodbye with Pavan and Alezac as Ash goes to collect the Child from Nima. The woman passes him over with a pout, which swiftly morphs into a secretive wink as she ushers a bottle of wine into Ash’s arms, too. 

“Have a few for me. Can’t drink and all,” she says, gesturing to her nearly indiscernible belly bump. “And make sure your Mandalorian eats all that food, hm? He seems like a stubborn one.”

“You’re perceptive,” Ash allows, “but trust me, I’m the truly stubborn one. He’ll eat it.”

Nima snorts with delight as Ash turns to hasten to Mando’s side, and together they return to Pavan’s dwelling, the wine bottle carefully tucked out of sight in Ash’s coat. The Tauntauns murmur in soft greeting as they creep past them up the stairs, with Ash working to get a rapidly tiring Child tucked into the bassinet while Mando powers on the heater.

Before long, the room is flooded with warmth and the kid is dozing soundly. Sansil is asleep as well in his chosen fortress under Mando’s bed, though Ash has no doubts that when she wakes later to check on the Tauntauns, she’ll find the loth-cat in the bassinet. 

Peeling herself out of her coat and boots, Ash thumps back onto her bed and sighs, letting Nima’s gifted wine bottle roll out beside her on the blanket. Mando doesn’t notice at first; he’s too concerned with pestering Ash about her shoulder as he sorts through their things, threatening bacta again if she’s lying to him. And when he stands and turns, Ash wishes she could see the expression on his face as he drawls, “ _What_. Is that.”

Though he didn’t phrase it as much of a question, Ash lifts the bottle, dangling it from between her fingers anyways. “Nima insisted that you get to try both the food _and_ the wine. C’mon, we’ll tie the sheet up so you can eat and have a few cups with me.”

“A few cups?” He practically splutters out, staticky and staccato. Ash ignores him as she gets to her feet, ignoring the weary protest from her body, to check the cupboards in the kitchenette for mugs.

“Aha!” She emerges with two mismatched ones, plunking them down on the table alongside the wine. “Help me open this, would you? You’ve gotta have a bottle opener in that thing somewhere.”

She raps one knuckle gently, playfully, against the beskar of his chest. He stares down at her, presumably entirely unamused.

“Fine, we don’t have to drink that much. Just…have a cup with me while you eat, hm? I promise I’ll settle down in bed and everything. No shenanigans.” 

“I never believe you when you say that,” he informs her, but he doesn’t say no, and he doesn’t stop her when she turns away to tie the other end of the sheet up, effectively blocking off one half of the room. When she turns back to face him, he’s popped the cork out of the bottle and is filling the mugs – though certainly not as generously as Nima had.

She reaches for her cup when he offers it to her, but he doesn’t immediately let go. His fingers adjust to settle on top of hers, holding her palm against the mug as she tilts her head back to look at him quizzically, hair tumbling in one long curtain down her spine. 

“Just…don’t overdo it, alright? I know how you are - you’re gonna to try to help Alezac with the engine tomorrow, and I don’t want…” He trails off, gestures vaguely with one hand. 

“Me to feel worse than I already might in the morning? Relax, Mando. I’m not gonna get belligerent or anything.” It still takes him a heartbeat to remove his hand, and Ash’s skin feels too cool when he does. She turns her back to him and crawls into bed, carefully cradling her mug between her folded legs so that she can twist her hair into a swift, messy braid. She tries, and fails, not to pay attention to the noises coming from behind the sheet – the hiss of his helmet releasing, the thump of his boots hitting the floor, the crinkle of the cling wrap as he uncovers his food. 

A sigh, she thinks, when he takes his first bite. 

“Fucking delicious, isn’t it?” She asks, glad he didn’t take much coaxing to eat. She hasn’t failed to notice how he puts his quarries and pucks above all else, save for his son; sometimes she realizes that she can’t remember the last time she saw him eat. She’s gotten good about remembering to prepare him meals, to gently (or sometimes not-so-gently) press them upon him until he gives in, filling his stomach and giving his body the energy that he so desperately needs.

“I’d be lying if I said no.” His voice without the helmet always surprises her; it’s so similar, and yet different. Warmer, richer, deeper. And in this little loft, with just a wool sheet and a side table separating their two beds, it sounds more pleasing than usual to Ash’s ears. It’s not often she’s heard it; sometimes when they eat with some form of partially closed door or partition separating them, he doesn’t talk, just listens. And never has she faced the possibility of hearing him remove it for so long, of leaving it off while he drinks and says so many words… 

His hand snakes through the crack between the sheet and the wall to place the bottle on the little table that has landed on Ash’s side of the room. Immediately, instinctively, she looks away. It’s not fast enough for her to miss the flash of deep golden skin, though it’s not the first time she’s seen that, either. But it feels intimate, and she doesn’t want to risk glimpsing him through the gap when he’s withdrawing his arm to his own side. 

“Don’t be sneaking sips while I can’t see you,” Mando warns, a teasing edge to his tone that she might have missed had it been filtered through his helmet. 

“I would never do something so scandalous and dishonorable,” Ash dismisses immediately, and he huffs in amusement, the clink of his fork against the empty plate like music to her ears. He hadn’t shoveled it into his mouth quite as swiftly as she had with her portion earlier, but she imagines it must have been a close call. “Plus, I promised Nima I’d share.”

He hums in response. “You seemed to be having fun dancing with her tonight.”

“I was.”

“Even though you shouldn’t have been doing anything _strenuous._ ”

“But all of the fun things in life are strenuous,” she can’t help pointing out. He chokes a bit into his mug, from the sounds of it, and she grins victoriously. “Y’know, you never answered me all that time ago, when I asked you if you’d ever had a drink. I just figured that meant I was right. Don’t tell me I’m getting you drunk for the first time?”

“We are not getting drunk, and no, you are not.”

“Tell me about the first time you drank. Were you young? Did you yack everywhere?” Ash muses, and Mando seems inclined to swiftly put a stop to that line of thinking.

“No, I didn’t get sick. But I was young – too young. Thirteen, actually. We snuck a bottle of something from the kitchens, me and the other foundlings my age. It was probably supposed to be used for cooking, because it tasted…just terrible. And even though I didn’t _’yack’_ , I didn’t feel very good the next morning at training. It was so obvious what we’d done, and I don’t know why we weren’t punished for it. Extra training, or something. Maybe they felt bad enough for our sorry asses as it was.”

She laughs at that, settling onto her side and lifting her head to drain her cup. She waits a moment before refilling it, and then carefully passes the bottle over through the sheet. He takes it from her, and this time when his fingers brush hers, there are no gloves. Something electric fizzles through her, something she hasn’t felt in so long, and it gives her pause. When she draws her arm back, it’s more slowly than she has any right to.

_Don’t forget what you have to do tonight. What you have to tell him._

_But not yet._

She's enjoying hearing him speak, enjoying how he's sharing things with her at last, things she had always wondered if he would ever divulge. And she doesn't know how he'll react to the fact that she has kept something so important hidden from him. Will he go silent before she hears his helmet sealing, the sound of his boots treading angrily as he explodes out from behind the sheet, whisking the Child away from her? Or maybe, just maybe, he might find a way to understand. To forgive her and trust her, one day.

“And what about you?” He asks, breaking the brief, charged silence. 

“When did I first get drunk? Ah, jeez, I was only a little older than you. Fifteen. Somehow wormed my way into this shitty cantina, acted like I belonged there and no one batted an eye. It’s a miracle I made it back to where I was hiding out that night. Unlike you, I did puke. Woke up with my head in the trashcan the next day, actually. Put me off of drinking for a very long time.”

“I can imagine.” Another silence, another pass of the bottle, another quick brush of skin – because this time, Mando doesn’t just put it on the table, and Ash knows she’s utterly screwed. "Scurrying home alone at fifteen? You've been on your own for a while."

It's a guess, and a good one. She bites her lip before she huffs a soft agreement. 

"That must have been very difficult for you."

"Somehow, I think you understand," she says. 

A pause, and then softly, "I do."

They move past it.

Back and forth they go for some time, longer than she imagined he would drink with her. The wine makes her bold and playful, and it makes him…what? Is he more talkative because of it, or because he trusts her? Is she imagining it, or has his tone taken on something softer but deeper, a near-mutter that seems meant only for her ears.

They trade information and conversation, small, unimportant things. Mostly she’s the one giving information, and he the one drawing more out of her with questions. She tells him about her favorite planet that she’d stumbled on in her youth, a warm oasis that she hadn’t ever wanted to leave. He tells her that he’s always preferred hunting on the more barren planets, but that he’s never really considered which one had been his favorite for personal reasons. She doesn’t press him and instead moves on to other things. 

At last she realizes that time has passed more swiftly than she thought; in a few hours she’ll need to check on the Tauntauns before dawn breaks, and so there is no more avoiding what she must do. Ash sits up, and the warm buzz that had settled into her bones from the wine seems to flee her, leaving her chilled. Clearing her throat softly, she toys with the strands of her hair poking out of her braid as she turns her face towards the curtain. “Mando?”

He doesn’t reply, but there’s a gentle rustle of the sheets that signals he’s listening.

“I think there’s something that we need to talk about. Something I need to tell you.” Her mouth goes dry and she stops, swallows. Stops again, then tries anyways. “Something I should have told you a long time ago.”

He’s silent for so long that she wants to scream just to hear something other than the frantic roar of her blood in her ears. Her heart is pounding so hard she feels as if she’s ran miles, and she’s steeling herself to surge ahead when his voice stops her.

“Alright. But I think that we should talk about it in the morning when we’re both…”

She’s nodding even though he can’t see her, so she manages to press out a breathy, “Yeah, that’s…a good idea. You’re right.”

Another soft rustle, the sound of his body turning – towards her, or away? She can only hope as to which as she turns her own torso towards where he is, just on the other side. She doesn’t know how she’ll possibly sleep now, with the next morning looming dark and soon. Perhaps she’ll creep down to the barn earlier than she needs to, keep the Tauntauns company…

“Goodnight, Ash.” Mando’s voice has fallen even quieter, so soft that she nearly misses it. Her own eyes flit closed, and she hugs her pillow close to her chest as she tries to untangle the emotional web fracturing its way through her. 

“Goodnight, Mando. I’ll see you in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So for all of you who might currently be screaming in rage that Ash STILL didn't tell him in this chapter, don't worry - the conversation is definitely happening in the next. It's just that this chapter got to 7.5k, and I needed to stop for the sake of my fingers! That's not exactly the type of conversation I wanted to leave on a cliffhanger, either. :P


	13. The Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I really felt as if the last chapter and this one were better presented back-to-back, rather than with a wait in-between, I went ahead and got this one out for you guys. I had a hell of a time writing it, too. Don't kill me! 
> 
> But a few things before we dive in.
> 
> To start, Ash’s injuries – felt I should clarify a bit for timelines sake. Dislocated shoulders take about 12-16 weeks to completely recover from, though most activity can be resumed in two weeks, and the sling can be discarded after a few days. As for bruised ribs, they take 3-6 weeks to heal. Can’t have her getting away from the crash unscathed – she wasn’t armored like Mando! 
> 
> I know a while back I asked if anyone was interested in seeing things from Mando’s POV. I got a lot of yeses, with the focus mainly wanting to be Ash – which is great, because I planned to use Mando chapters very sparingly, for certain events where I feel as if his perspective is the correct one to tell the story through. So while this is not a Mando chapter, just a heads up we might see some in the future. 😉 
> 
> I am so thrilled you guys are loving this. I have a pretty clear-cut idea of how major fic events are going down, but for the little moments in between, I try to really just let the characters guide me. We have Ash’s father and Moff Gideon to deal with, so I imagine Ash will be with you guys for a while!

_After all this time_  
_Still you struggle_  
_Even words of love_  
_Ring so hollow_

Mando finds her the next morning with the Tauntauns.

She’s not sure how long she’s been there, truthfully. She’d tried to sleep for a while after her night with Mando, but before long the effects of the wine had dwindled, leaving her with a dull headache that eventually drove her from her bed. She could hear Mando’s deep breathing beside her, and considering he hadn’t immediately sought her ought, she’d assumed she made a clean getaway.

The Tauntauns were drowsy but not dozing when she crept downstairs and settled herself on a large, lumpy bag of feed between their stalls. She’s been in that exact same spot ever since, scratching at the creatures scaly faces when they occasionally lower their heads to breathe warm air across her face and neck. It’s much cooler down here, and Ash’s shoulder had proven to be terribly swollen when she’d awoken – maybe she had overexerted herself just a touch – but she welcomes the slight bite of pain each time she shifts.

“Have you come up with names for them?” His voice doesn’t startle her nearly as much as anyone else’s might’ve. Even though he’d been deadly silent coming down the stairs, clad in only a pair of trousers, a shirt, and socks - besides his helmet of course. Her smile is weak but at least present when she lifts a hand to gesture towards the Tauntauns stalls.

“Didn’t have to; they’re carved right into the wood. Dash and Lysa.” 

“Interesting choices.” He lingers there partially in the shadows for a moment, watching her. The sun is still nestled beneath the distant horizon, the sky outside just beginning to lighten into a dim shade of gray, the coupling of it and the blinding white snow casting the light in the barn a pale blue pallor. “You sure you want to do this first thing in the morning?”

Ash chokes out a laugh that sounds half-desperate. “No, but if I don’t now, I might never. You have no idea how much it took out of me last night, just choking those words through my teeth.”

“Alright then.” He seems to radiate calm as he moves towards her, even though he can’t possibly know what kind of bomb she’s about to drop. He settles himself carefully on a bag of feed opposite her, placing his palms flat on his thighs and leaning back against the wood behind him to regard her through his helmet. “Whenever you’re ready.”

His tone is entirely neutral, much like his body language, as if he’s dealing with a skittish animal and he’s aware of it. Despite the panic raging through her, the indecision, Ash can’t help but to be soothed by it. It’s like he knows exactly how to handle her, exactly what she needs in that moment, and it’s such a bittersweet realization that it makes her throat burn.

“You asked me that second day on your ship if you should be concerned about being offered a puck with my name on it, and I said no. That was the truth. And I couldn’t have possibly anticipated in that moment that you might get a puck with someone else’s name on it instead.” There’s no easy way to dive into this, and Ash imagines she’ll have to backtrack over herself a bit. But she knows he’s listening, knows he’s actually hearing what she’s telling him. “After Thurra, you asked me who was looking for me, and I told you that I didn’t know. That wasn’t the truth though.”

Here, she sees the first reaction in him – his shoulders tighten a fraction. They’d told each other truths that night on the Crest, shared things with one another that were raw and private and true. And still she had lied when he had asked her such a simple question. She surges on.

“A week later, you told me that you had a puck. You didn’t show it to me right away, remember? We were still so awkward after Thurra. But you apologized to me, and things were okay, for a few minutes. Until you showed me the puck. Until I saw…”

And that’s where she finds it the most difficult to continue, despite how it seems as if there’s not enough oxygen in the room and there never will be until she spits this out. It’s easy – two words. Two little words that don’t even begin to sum up the gravity of their meaning, the weight that hangs on them and the eyes that seem to open and linger upon her when she talks about him. As if he can see her, wherever she is, just because she spoke of him.

But she says the words anyways, without any of that. 

“My father.”

Mando isn’t saying a word. He’s just sitting there, and his posture hasn’t changed a bit; it doesn’t feel as welcoming anymore. Ash tugs the tie from her braid, harshly combing her fingers through the intertwined ropes to release them. Her hair falls straight and free, and when she tilts her head down, it frames her face in shadows. 

Is he remembering what she is? After they crashed, when she awoke in pain and he dressed her wounds, before confessing that he only wanted to help her, only wanted to know what she was hiding so that he could protect her, even suggesting that she was his crew, perhaps one day his family…

“I didn’t tell you,” Ash says, “because I’m a coward. I was afraid - _am_ afraid. I didn’t expect much to come of this when you invited me along. It was an easy job, an easy adventure, a way to get away from that shithole I was living in for a while. I didn’t know that I would start to feel…”

She trails off, and then she just…leaves the word hanging. Because there’s nothing more to it, is there? She didn’t know that she would start to _feel_.

“That’s who Tyrlan was talking about,” Mando says, speaking at last. His voice is low, devoid of any discernible emotion for his modulator to pick up. It makes him sound…robotic. “The people sniffing after you. He knew they were your father’s men.”

“It’s been long suspected that my father had something to do with the guild’s downfall,” Ash murmurs, tapping her fingertips against her chilly thigh. “Maybe he was seeking me and he found a way to hurt me instead. But that’s never something I could confirm, nor anyone else. Tyrlan was never swift to discount the theory. I’m not sure if he thought I had something to do with it or not.”

“Did you?”

The question stings as hard as a slap would’ve; she has to remind herself that he doesn’t know what he’s insinuating. That she would have worked with _her father_ to bring down the organization that had housed her, taught her, introduced her to her first love…bile rises in her throat. Her weak protest of “no” sounds pathetic.

_Come on, Ash. Where’s the girl who got you through the past fourteen years? Where’s the fire that’s kept you alive?_

But nothing sparks in her.

“You knew there was a possibility that your father was seeking you out somewhere, and you never thought that was important information to share with me? And – and you were just going to let me walk blindly into Hoth without knowing what this all meant to you? Were you…protecting him or something?”

“ _No._ ” This explodes out of her vehemently, because she needs him to believe this at least. She would have never, ever chosen to protect her father over him and…and the kid, and Sansil… “No, I just…I didn’t know how to tell you. This is a part of me that I’ve kept to myself for so long, and I didn’t want this to happen. I never wanted either of you to ever…”

Ah, but she doesn’t know how to finish. Frustration rises in her, with herself being her sole target. Before her, Mando stands and begins to pace the length of the walkway between the stalls, his sock-clad feet barely making a whisper of sound.

“So how dangerous is your father, Ashmire? Exactly what were you about to let me walk into? Did you think you’d just hide out on the Crest while I dealt with your family spat for you – or _whatever_ the hell is going on between you two?” 

“It wasn’t like that. I never – look, just hold on. This is a lot. Let me figure out how to explain…” Her head is throbbing, but that little stubborn voice in her mind, in her heart, drowns even that pain out.

“ _Explain what?_ ” He whirls and she flinches, but he doesn’t advance on her. Of course he doesn’t. He just slams his palms into one of the support beams instead, _hard_. The fury in the room is palpable, all traces of calm neutrality bled from him. She can practically taste it on her tongue, coppery and hot – or maybe that’s just the blood from how hard she’s bitten her cheek at his outburst. The Tauntauns stamp nervously behind her. “God. The danger you could have put us in, could have put the kid in…I practically begged for you to let me help you.” 

_You have to tell him. Tell him what happened to you._

She can’t force herself to say it, and he rallies himself so quickly that it’s dizzying. “I should have known something like this was going to happen…but maybe I _did_. I told myself that you couldn’t be trusted the moment I saw you bleeding on the Crest with stolen goods just _spilling_ out of your bag. A thief. But I still – “ A hard shake of his head, the movement nearly violent. “I should’ve known.” 

He’s practically talking to himself at this point, murmuring under his breath, not seeing how each heavy word falls like a hammer on her. Before she can think of what to do, there’s a soft hiccupping wail from upstairs. Mando freezes, his helmet never turning towards her as he says, “I’ll get him. If you’re going to see Alezac with us, you’d better start getting ready.”

He turns before she can say anything and then he’s gone, disappearing up the stairs. She waits a heartbeat, two, three – and then she bends over, resting her forehead against her knees in an attempt to open her struggling airway. The Tauntauns _harrumph_ and nudge her shoulders, but she ignores them as she tries to get herself together.

_You’ll wipe your eyes. You’ll go upstairs. You’ll wash and dress. You’ll go see Alezac._

A wave of something harsh and dark batters at her defenses, but Ash stands and forces her shoulders straight, forces her hands to her face.

_You’ll wipe your eyes._

She presses too hard and sees stars, nearly tumbles into a tack rack on her way towards the stairs. 

_You’ll go upstairs._

She climbs them slowly, each step deliberate, swiping at her face with each one. By the time she reaches the top, there’s at least no more dampness leaking down her cheeks. Her side silently throbs a protest.

_You’ll wash and dress._

The curtain is pulled when she enters; Mando is on ‘her’ side of the room, seated at the table to feed the kid. The basin has been moved presumably behind the drawn sheet, so Ash slips behind it and tries not to cry when she sees he’s already filled it, probably before he’d sought her out that morning. The bacta and her sling have been sat on the little table at the foot of Mando’s bed.

Ash slips into the water as quietly as possible, not protesting at the chill of it. She washes methodologically, from her head to her toes and back again before stepping from the tub and drying herself. Despite the rapidly intensifying irritation in her shoulder – gods, this was the worst time to be stuck on a frozen wasteland – she leaves the bacta and sling untouched as she dresses in her warmest clothing.

When she steps from behind the curtain, hair wet and held in a pile atop her head by a struggling loop of twine, Mando is just finishing donning his boots. He stands, cape fluttering lightly from his movement as he closes the kid into the bassinet. Quickly, Ash pulls dehydrated meat from her bag and mixes up a portion for Sansil, thunking the bowl on the floor for the meowing cat. Then, all of them silent – even the Child, ears draped low at the tension – depart for the mechanics shop together.

Alezac is in high spirits when they arrive, despite his generous serving of drinks the night before. He already has the Utility Tug rumbling in the yard, brown and boxy with two little arms spread wide beneath it to grip the ship it needs to tow. It isn’t the prettiest specimen – but it’s a functioning relic, and Ash busies herself with studying it again and again, as if it is the most fascinating thing in the world while Mando goes to speak with Alezac.

It isn’t long before there is a touch at her good shoulder and Ash flinches, turning. Nima stands before her, palms upturned in surrender as she smiles ruefully. 

“Whoa, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Wanted to see how you were feeling after last night’s escapades – hey, your skin is a little warm.” Nima pauses, gazing into Ash’s eyes for a long moment. “Hm. Anyways, figured I could watch the kid while you guys go get the ship, if that’s okay with Mando? I don’t have anything on my plate today besides a little winter cleaning.”

“He might appreciate that. You should ask him.” 

Nima blinks, and Ash inwardly curses herself. Still, the Twi’lek seems to take it in stride. “Alright then, I will. And Ash? If you ever find the need for someone to talk to, or just company while you’re here in Ardwell…”

“Yeah, of course. Thanks, Nima.” She watches as the woman veers off towards Mando, whom – after a moment’s discussion – parts the lid of the bassinet and passes the Child to her. Smiling faintly, Ash turns away from the Utility Tug at last, forcing her feet to lead her towards Alezac – and, inevitably, Mando.

 _Funny, isn’t it, how quickly things can change?_

“You tagging along?” Alezac asks as she draws near, and she nods, not bothering to look towards Mando to hunt for a reaction. She can’t imagine that he wants to be bothered with her at all until he has more time to sort out what he’s learned, and she silently vows to give him his space during their little recovery mission. When Alezac motions them towards the Tug, she sidles silently into the cramped backseat while Mando wedges himself into the passenger. Alezac places one large hand on the throttle, before pausing and turning to glance at her over his shoulder.

“Sure you’re up for this?” He asks; Ash is sure that sharp eye of his must’ve caught her exhaustion and slightly unusual gait the day before – and, specifically, this morning. The lack of sleep and the warmth flooding her cheeks despite the cold creeping into her bones to agitate her aches whispers that it will be no easy foe to overcome. 

And Mando…he’s silent. Waiting like Alezac, without a single protest to be offered. To be honest, she’s stunned he even offered to let her come along in the first place after their little barn fiasco. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d left her there freezing for Pavan to eventually find. 

_”I should’ve known.”_

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m good. If I drop dead, just…have your wife feed my cat.”

Alezac laughs at that, urging the Tug forward into a slow, shuddering hover. Much swifter than they could dream of being on foot, of course – but the Utility Tug isn’t exactly meant for speed. “Oh, we’ll have to keep you alive then. I don’t think I can handle a newborn and a pet at the same time, when I’ve never had either one.” 

“Tricky business,” Ash agrees, though it’s lackluster and she has little to offer beyond that. The Tug is stuffy and loud, but Alezac doesn’t seem to mind. He spends most of the journey alternating between humming and marveling over the interior of the Tug – admittedly in much better shape than Ash could have anticipated from the outside. Still, she leaves responding to Mando; she’s determined to keep her mouth shut and keep out of his way as much as she can. 

Ardwell fades into the distance behind them, and Ash turns to press her forehead against the window of the ship, watching miles and miles of nothing but ice-crusted snow disappear beneath them. The frigid window feels good against her skin, and she turns her cheek towards it, sighing as softly as she can manage under her breath. Her mind keeps stubbornly attempting to imagine what will happen once they return, and once the Crest is repaired, though Ash tries her damnedest to escape the dark tendrils of that dangerous line of thinking. In her heart, she thinks she knows what the most likely outcome is and knows that she isn’t ready to consider it. Not now, in this cramped little tow ship with the very man whom she must have hurt so deeply. 

Blindsided him, after a night of drinking and toeing the line of something precious. How did she expect him to react? The fact that his anger had only escaped from him once during their encounter was certainly a demonstration of more restraint than she deserved.

The Tug begins to slow, and Ash glances up to find that they’re nearing the Crest. It’s covered in ice, nearly obscured by mounds of snow, and badly beaten. Alezac parks his ship to allow Mando and Ash to secure any important loose objects in the ship, and silently they get to work, he covering the top floors while she does what she can on the main. Alezac works from the outside in an attempt to power the ship long enough to close the ramp, and by the time she and Mando have finished, he’s successful. The ramp groans to a shaky halt behind them as she and Mando trek back through the snow to the Tug.

It’s hovering just slightly off the ground, idling, and Ash hesitates for a moment as she glances at the distance she’ll need to hop. The impact of her landing, no matter how slight, won’t be gentle on her ribs, but she steels herself and leaps all the same – the edges of her cloak just barely sweeping, unseen and unsensed, through Mando’s outstretched fingers. 

Her vision is tinged white at the edges as her shoulder gives a particularly vicious throb, outshining even her ribs. The flesh feels hot and puffy when she reaches beneath the layers of her clothes to press her chilled fingers against her skin. The moment she’s able, she’ll need to settle down and take it easy for a while. She certainly won’t be able to help Alezac much in her current state.

The dizziness has mostly subsided by the time they’re in the air and Alezac carefully maneuvers the Tug so that it hovers over the Crest, little magnetic arms spreading wide until one paddle falls on either side of the dilapidated ship. Carefully, seemingly inch by inch, the arms compress until the Crest is snugly held between them, and she can’t help but marvel that the Tug seems not even to sneeze at the weight it suddenly hefts.

Once Alezac is sure the Crest is secured and the Tug isn’t struggling, they begin the journey back to Ardwell. Alezac is practically buzzing with anticipation, proving without a doubt that Ash should’ve never worried at all – it’s clear he loves the hell out of what he does. 

Nima is waiting with the large back gate to Alezac’s scrapyard thrown open upon their return. Alezac carefully maneuvers the Crest beneath a spacious awning half-hidden by the two-story shop before tumbling out of the Tug, already banging around inside of the shop by the time Ash’s boots have touched the snow. He emerges with a toolbelt struggling to encircle his broad waist, his mechanical eye whirring noisily as he scans the exterior of the ship. 

“Can you see inside with that thing?” Ash asks, trying not to sound too winded.

“To an extent. Mostly wiring, which isn’t our issue here obviously. It’ll make it easier for me to see down inside the dark corners of the engine bay, though. You helping?” He’s striding towards the Crest as he tosses the question over his shoulder, and Ash is just about to follow him when a hand brushes her arm. She turns to find Nima there, just as Alezac pauses and turns.

“I think Ash should help me today. See if the Mandalorian will lend you a hand,” Nima says, and her husband offers only a shrug in response before he’s off. Smile fading, the Twi’lek woman turns to Ash and cocks her head. “You need to come inside and sit down for a while.”

“I’m fine – hey, where’s the kid?”

“Sleeping.” Despite Ash’s protest, Nima loops her arm through Ash’s and turns her towards the shop, expertly maneuvering her inside before Ash can so much as raise a finger. Before long, she’s been pressed up the staircase into the living area, the doorway opening to a warm kitchen and a tidy living space, each corner stuffed with old armchairs and thriving deciduous’ in pots, their wide leaves exploding towards the light emitted through a high window. There’s something that smells delectable simmering on the stove as Nima practically strong-arms Ash into one of the armchairs, before gesturing towards a closed door to their left with a finger pressed against her lips. “Luckily, a crib was the first thing we got when we figured it out. Little man is tucked in snugly, snoring away.”

Ash hums, knowing better than to protest as Nima shuffles about in the kitchen, seemingly beginning the process of brewing tea. “I imagine you must be very excited.”

“You have no idea. It was a little unexpected, but it’s been smooth sailing since the day we found out. I think Alezac is more excited than I am, and it’s only been…three months? Anyways, give me a few more months and then we can talk about babies until our ears bleed. What I’m interested in knowing is: what the hell are you doing?”

Nima poses this question as she shuffles over to press some kind of soft, cold bun into Ash’s hand. She hasn’t even considered breakfast until this very moment, and she descends on the bread gratefully while Nima resumes the tea, before at last managing, “What do you mean?”

“Ah, don’t bother playing dumb. You and I – we’re alike.” The kettle is steaming as she lifts it from the stove. “You’re not in any shape to be fucking with that ship today and you know it. That, coupled with your hangdog expression and general ‘kicked puppy’ attitude leads me to suspect that perhaps I shouldn’t have smuggled you that bottle.”

“I didn’t get drunk and do something stupid if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve been doing stupid things stone-cold sober, all on my own.” 

“Certainly sounds familiar.” Nima pads over to press a steaming cup of tea into Ash’s hands before settling herself in the chair adjacent to the miserable little thief’s. “Alright, so you did something stupid. Wanna tell me what’s going on? We can think of this conversation as practice if that makes it easier, because god knows I’m gonna need some experience under my belt once this kiddo can vent.”

And though Ash truly appreciates what Nima is offering…she doesn’t want to talk about it. Can’t, really. There’s too much she’d have to explain, too much she can’t say for the sake of protecting Mando, too much that she hasn’t even sorted out yet because her feelings are still a furious ball of confusion and pain writhing in her chest. “I don’t think I want to.”

“And that’s just fine.” Nima settles back into the lumpy cushioning of her chosen chair, sighing and letting her light eyes drift closed. Ash takes the opportunity to study her face in a way that she couldn’t the night before, half-shadowed by the bonfire. Healthy and full and kind, just like Pavan’s, just like Alezac’s and Gavyn’s and everyone else’s. Maybe…maybe this isn’t the worst place for Mando to leave her when he inevitably decides that he will.

“But,” Nima says, her voice an anchoring line that Ash follows out of her spiraling thoughts. “We are going to have to do something about that fever you’re sporting. Seems like it rose pretty quickly between the time you left and got back today. Mando not taking proper care of you?”

“ _Don’t_ say anything to him,” Ash barks, practically before Nima has even finished speaking. The woman’s eyes blink open, and she arches an eyebrow as she watches Ash partially deflate before her eyes. “Please.”

He won’t dare leave her, no matter how much he might want to, if he knows that she’s sick again. He’s no stupid man; he knows the nature of her wounds and the time it takes for them to heal, even with the bacta, the strength of theirs not strong enough to seep down into her very muscle and bone. But if he thinks that she’s on the mend, that the healing process is underway…he’ll go. And she won’t have to be carted around with a man who she knows is just waiting for the moment he hears a healthy breath. 

“Figured it was something like that,” Nima murmurs as she stands. “Don’t worry, I won’t pry. And I won’t say anything. But you’ve gotta let me patch you up a little bit.”

And Ash does. Her body is so tired, her mind even more-so, and she practically goes limp when Nima begins gently lifting her sore arm to wrap stiff, uncomfortable bandaging around Ash’s shoulder and torso. To her surprise, the bandaging is cool to the touch when Nima lays it across her skin, and before long it has began to soothe some of the burning ache in the flesh below. The bandaging loops around her sore ribs, and Ash imagines that it’s the only thing holding her together, nice and snug around the entirety of her sides and shoulder. 

Nima offers her two tiny capsules – anti-inflammatories – that Ash downs with the rest of her tea, and by the time the Twi’lek woman is pulling a blanket over her, she’s already began to drift off. And if she feared that her sleep might be restless, haunted by her early morning conversation, it isn’t. It’s blissfully devoid of anything at all, aided entirely by the strange Force emitted by the slumbering child in the next room.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

“Ash. Wake up.”

She comes to abruptly, only saved from a moment of pain by the stiff wrappings still encasing her. She blinks tiredly up at Nima, who’s leaning over her with a soft expression settling on her blue-ish face. “Mm? What time is it?”

“Pretty far into the afternoon. You slept a good while. I tried to tell him that you could stay and keep sleeping, that we’d bring you back when you woke up, but…” Nima straightens, gesturing towards the kitchen. Ash tilts her head, eyes settling on the propped door as voices drift up from below faintly – Alezac’s, and Mando’s. “He already has the kid.” 

“Good news about the ship?” Ash’s sluggish mind is struggling to catch up with her body as she sits up, smoothing down her unruly hair and squinting against the rays of light that fall across her eyes. 

“I’ll let Alezac tell you.” 

She nods, and when she’s at last composed herself and made her way down the staircase (with Nima’s subtle assistance) she finds the mechanic and the Mandalorian seated around the crammed little table. 

“Ah, there she is!” Alezac crows. “I’m sorry that you got roped into helping scrub down a house, rather than helping with the Crest.”

Ash shoots a swift glance towards Nima, who’s shrug is so tiny that it could be easily missed. She’d worked with what she could. “Don’t apologize. I’m supposed to be taking it easy anyways, as much as I’d rather be elbow-deep in the interior of that beautiful ship.”

“Not much of a beauty at the moment, but it can be fixed. We were just discussing it, actually.” Alezac pauses and Nima steps forward, to Ash’s immense relief, to quickly clear a chair for her. She slips down into it, not daring to glance towards Mando as she waits for the mechanic to continue. “You were right, of course – the engine’s fucked. Gonna need a total replacement. Already started working on getting the dead block out today. I’ll continue tomorrow. I’ve only got one spare engine big enough to power the Crest, and unfortunately, it’s in the Tug. I’m okay with swapping ‘em because it doesn’t get much use, but it’ll need a new one for the future regardless. So in terms of pricing…”

He trails off, giving them a moment. Ash fiddles in her seat, considering. It’s Mando’s ship, but he was kind enough to house her on it for as long as he did, and she’s the reason that it malfunctioned in the first place – assuming Tyrlan truly was to blame. She’ll need at least _some_ of the credits she’s earned if she’s going to have to survive on her own soon – how little can she manage with? A quarter? Yeah, that should leave him enough to cover a large portion for the ship, and she’ll be able to squeak by. She opens her mouth and turns her head towards Alezac, says so. Doesn’t see the way Mando’s helmet turns sharply towards her. 

“Well, if that’s all settled – “ Alezac begins, but he doesn’t get far.

“No.” Mando halts the man with a single word, and the room seems to go quiet. “I’ll pay the entire sum of the fee.”

She’s not sure what he’s playing at, and she can’t argue with him here, so she resigns herself to a nod. She’ll just have to leave whatever portion he refuses to accept hidden somewhere on the Crest. It shouldn’t be too hard to convince Nima to help her.

Alezac’s cybernetic eye flickers rapidly between the pair of them, perhaps waiting to see if the payment dispute is done. When he’s satisfied it is, he nods. “Alright then. If you’d like to help with it, I’d surely appreciate it – give you a discount.” 

“Of course,” Mando agrees automatically, and that seems to be that. Without much of a backwards glance in her direction, Mando stands and bundles the Child into his thick winter clothing, pressing out into the frigid air. Ash follows him almost mechanically, nearly out of the door before Nima stops her.

“You’re welcome over, any time. And I heard you have a cat. If you come, bring it along. I’ve been trying to convince Alezac to get me a pet for the longest time.”

“I don’t think you’ll have any luck with that, but we can share Sansil. Hey – you think if I needed a place to stay for a while, you could help set me up with something here?”

Nima pauses, pulling away to study Ash’s face. Whatever she finds there, it makes her own soften. “Of course I could. But I think that’s something you should consider very carefully, Ash.”

It’s not for her to consider; she doesn’t have any options. Ash smiles instead of responding and presses out into the swirling snow after the retreating figure of the Mandalorian.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

She wakes with a start.

It’s dark out still, some time after midnight – she thinks. Even the daylight looks dark on this barren planet, and for a moment Ash fears that she overslept and did not wander down to check on the Tauntauns in time. Perhaps Mando did so for her, likely disappointed in her negligence…

But no. There’s a soft hiccup, barely a sob, that has Ash sitting up immediately. She knows the bassinet is on Mando’s side of the room, but the sound of the kid’s distress is unmistakable and she has to try to get to him. Maybe before he wakes Mando up, so that the tired man can keep sleeping. After depositing she and the Child at the loft, he’d left to do god knew what while Ash stewed over her own thoughts. When he’d returned, he’d swiftly heated three servings of something dried, leaving Ash’s bowl on the table and retreating behind the curtain with the kid. She had eaten it but couldn’t have told anyone what it was if they'd asked afterwards. 

She doesn’t remember falling asleep. How long did she lie there, trying to hold herself together around the warmth stubbornly creeping back into her skin? It doesn’t matter. All that matters now is the kid.

She slips out of bed and lowers herself to her hands and knees, cradling her hurt arm against her like an injured animal left with only three legs. Shuffling along the floor, she closes her eyes and reaches blindly under the curtain until her palm cups something rounded and smooth – too small to be the bassinet. She recoils from Mando’s helmet as if burned, trying not to think about it as she continues to grope about until she brushes the bottom of the hovering bassinet.

Guiding it carefully with the tips of her fingers, she leads it through the curtain and into the kitchen on her side. Sansil is curled around the kid within, but even that does not seem to be enough of a comfort. The Child's eyes are half-squinted still, likely shaken from his slumber by a nightmare. His ears droop as Ash reaches for him, cradling him in her arms as she eases down until she’s sitting on the floor with her back against the wall. 

“Shh, hey little guy, it’s alright. You prone to nightmares?” He tilts his head at the sound of her soft voice and she mimics the movement. “I am, too. Well – usually. But it’s alright. You’re not alone now. I’m here.”

She brushes her fingers across one of his soft little ears, dancing across his skull to smooth down the fine little hairs there, nearly invisible. 

“I don’t know how much longer I will be. Here, that is. With you.” His ears perk and then immediately droop dramatically, a sadness seeming to shine in his brown eyes. “I know. Me, too. But I don’t really have a choice. I did something really dumb, and I hurt your dad. Could’ve…could’ve hurt you, too.”

He _ehh_ ’s softly and she shushes him, but really she’s shushing herself, because her eyes are starting to burn and her throat is closing up.

“I don’t know if you understand me, but if you do, listen up. You always be thankful as hell for your dad, kid. The love that I hear in his voice sometimes when he talks about you…not even a helmet can filter it. That’s what every kid wants to hear from their daddy.”

When the first tear falls, it thankfully misses his face. His eyes are closing and he’s swiftly drifting off in the comfort of her embrace, and she’s trying so hard to keep her body from trembling so that she doesn’t wake him again. 

There’s a soft swish, the padding of footsteps. Her breath catches in her throat, and something as quiet as a whisper flits through her mind: _Don’t turn around._

She listens. Both to the warning and to the sound of Mando’s body lowering behind her. Though he hasn’t touched her, she thinks that she can feel how close he is, anyways. Right there – close enough to touch, but a right that she’s lost.

“I thought about it. All day.” His voice is low, unmodulated, unfiltered. A sound she both wants to run towards and away from. “ _All day._ I thought back to all of the conversations we had – the way you changed whenever I unknowingly hovered around the truth about your father. The look in your eyes.”

Her vision has adjusted to the darkness of the room for her to be able to faintly make out the kid’s features, now slumbering in her arms as she tucks him more tightly against her, ignoring her shoulder’s protest. The next word that Mando breathes flays her wide open.

“Fear.”

Yes. So much of it, dizzying, sickening. And she’d long ago been taught to feel ashamed of it, been taught that if she could not stamp down her fear, she would be sacrificed to it. 

“I need you to tell me,” he grits out; without his helmet and with she practically robbed of sight, his voice shakes her to her core. She knows what he’ll ask – tell him why she lied. 

“Tell me what he did to you.”

She half-turns and then stops herself, squeezing her eyes closed as if she can will herself into oblivion by simply imagining it. But it’s no use; the dam is shattering within her, the water churning just beyond, scarcely held at bay. And when a particularly sharp pang of fear flashes through her and the Child’s eyes suddenly snap open, locking with hers, she gasps. 

The storm within her pauses, stalls. There is something else there now, something foreign that’s holding it at bay, offering her a path to walk safely for the time being. A road between the ocean, two mighty sides of the sea waiting with bated breath for her passing – impossible.

And yet.

Ashmire opens her mouth, and she tells Mando everything.


	14. The Fairytale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uuuuh...Merry late Christmas? :D This chapter is dedicated to Loren12 - yup, you get THREE days straight of my words! But I'd still like the time to thank each of you again for your support. Love seeing you guys get hyped up in the comments!
> 
> So, I decided to approach this chapter in a unique way that you'll see soon. I felt it was the best way for me to go about it considering that we deal with some very heavy trauma that's addressed in this chapter. This is a warning for physical and mental abuse, as well as child abuse. I do think that I handled them delicately while still giving enough details to make it clear what horrors she endured; there's not any gore or super detailed descriptions of violence, but you certainly come out of the chapter with an understanding of what happened and likely with a very good idea of things that went unspoken.
> 
> I just wanted to let you guys know; I'll always give y'all heads up like that. <3

_We don't hope for making things better_  
_All we want is to keep it together_  
_Every day is a rainy day, no changing the weather_  
_This kind of life has made our hearts as hard as leather_

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

_”Once upon a time,” Ash whispers, breath ghosting across the Child’s face as she stares down into his huge, huge eyes. “There was a little girl.”_

She was like any other ordinary little girl, really. She had a mother and a father who doted on her, and she lived in a little cabin that her parents had built together in the summer of their youths. It wasn’t the nicest house, but it was warm in the winter and filled with laughter, and the girl loved it all the same. Her mother was an ex-fighter pilot, now flying comfortably for a small shipping company, and sometimes she was away for days, weeks. The girl always missed her mother terribly, but her father was a good man who spent his time home repairing and improving their house, tending to their little garden, and keeping his daughter company.

She was a bright child, with all these stories and dreams that her parents adoringly indulged. One day she would want to be a pilot, like her mama; the next, a daring bounty hunter. She raced up and down the wooden steps of their front porch, pretending to take aim at imaginary targets with a little wooden gun, and inside her father paused in the middle of painting the kitchen to stir something on the stove. He was good about fixing things, but he hadn’t gotten to the front gate yet – the girl heard it creak open, which meant that her mother was home for a while, and on that day, like many prior and a few after, everything was perfect.

Though the girl’s mother had escaped from her time in the war mostly unscathed, a spine injury eventually made her long trips in pilot seats too uncomfortable for her. Though she must have hated to be grounded, she clipped her wings and roosted in that little cabin with her daughter, and her husband was the one who had to take up the role of supporting the family then. He accepted various jobs, some only one-time gigs and some lasting weeks, months. Suddenly it was her mother always home with the girl and her father who she missed; he was tired to the bone when he came home, too tired to cook or repair things or play. Her mother did those instead, and if the gate was still a little lopsided after she “fixed” it and she hammered her thumb twice in the process, everyone had the good grace not to mention it.

Work grew more difficult to find with the change of seasons, and the girl’s father grew more irritable. The house was no longer filled with laughter and the made-up sounds of a lightsaber while he dwelled there; it became an easy, if not slightly pitiful, way to tell when the man had returned from a job. Often times the girl heard the angry murmur of his voice at night, and the softer one of her mother, imploring. As the winter came upon them, the silence in the house grew and lingered. Even as time wore on, and as the spring rains came and the summer sun hung high above them, the light did not seem to penetrate the cabin again. At least not until the girl’s father found himself very fortunate indeed when he met several very important men in the local tavern.

The girl was too young still to be privy to more detailed information, and it wasn’t important to her anyways. All that mattered was that her father didn’t seem so angry at the world anymore, and even though she was sad when he convinced her mother to move from the cabin to somewhere “ _less homely_ ”, she didn’t make a fuss about it. She was too happy to have a full belly and the presence of both parents once again. Besides, her new room wasn’t so bad, even if the house her father had chosen was a little too high up in the secluded mountains for her taste.

But if she thought her life would return to that picturesque farce of normalcy that it’d been before, she was naïve. The job, _whatever_ it was, changed her father. Though his anger had disappeared, so too did his warmth. As he began to rise through the ranks of his position, he grew into a sharp, calculating man. Sometimes the girl would tiptoe past his study well after midnight, hunting for a glass of water, only to find him seated there at his great oak desk, fingers steepled and chin resting thoughtfully atop them, his pale eyes absentmindedly considering the darkness around him in absolute silence. He would blink and focus, noticing her at last, and his voice would always make her shiver like a warning when he would say, “Hurry back to bed.”

Sometimes, strange men with odd patches on their clothing would visit their home and lock themselves in the study with her father for long hours at a time. The girl’s mother, pale and with more silver in her dark hair than ever before, would urge her through tight lips to never speak with the men. And the girl always listened, because something about them was not quite right – especially the look in one’s eyes as she found herself in the hall with him accidentally, shortly after her eleventh birthday. As if he were assessing her worth. And to her horror, it was not long before her father began to look at her in that way, too.

The arguments between her parents had grown scarce over the years, much like her mother’s spirit, but that night there was an uproar from their room that the girl could not ignore, no matter how hard she pressed her pillow over her ears. “She’s too young,” came the furious sound of her mother’s voice, more alive than the girl had heard it in years. And then, the hard-edged murmur of her father replying (because he did not yell anymore, but the firmness in his voice was so much worse), “I’m merely suggesting that she begin training. With me.” The noise that the girl’s mother made was furious, primal. Her voice wasn’t like anything she’d ever heard before when the woman replied, “I don’t want her involved with this. I don’t want her to end up like you have.”

There was a noise then, dull and low, a thump. Silence settled eerily and suddenly, and the girl sat up in alarm. When the silence was broken, it was by her father, the decision in his voice clear. “You will not tell me what I cannot do with my daughter.”

And so the next morning at dawn, the girl’s training began, and her mother did not emerge from her room that day.

The girl learned a lot of things, then. She learned that her father had taken a job smuggling goods for a high profile contact, whose name he informed her that he would never divulge, and that she was never allowed to ask. He would not tell her what they were smuggling, either. When she inquired, the look he gave her froze her in place, like a rabbit pinned beneath the hungry gaze of a wolf. 

When the girl asked him one day, winded after a day sparring – the first portion of her training, always with her father, who never softened his blows – why he had chosen her, he did not look at her when he replied. “I’m told that the scale of the operation is increasing. We’ll need more smugglers, people who are intelligent and…fearless. A surprisingly common trait to be found in a man is cowardice, you’ll learn. We haven’t room for that. It was suggested to me that rather than recruiting the future generation, we mold them.” 

Her father, she later learned, didn't smuggle anymore – hadn’t for some time. Several promotions ago he’d stopped getting his hands dirty, and instead he began to expect others to do so for him. His daughter was only one of many. A target had been placed upon her back that day when she’d stumbled into that man in the hallway, just a heartbeat too early for salvation. And by the time a year had passed and the girl turned twelve, she hardly felt like herself at all. The girl who had dreamed of what she would one day be was gone; there was no question of it now. 

But if her spirit was broken that winter, it flared hot the next. Hormones afforded her a rebellious streak that blossomed along with her simmering resentment for her father. She hated him, and at times she felt like she hated her mother, too, for what she had allowed to befall her daughter. But then the girl would see the woman, gray entirely now and with a melancholy look that seemed never to leave her eyes anymore, and she knew that she could not hate her. She could only ever wonder what it was her father had done to break a woman so fierce and full of fire.

That fire, it seemed, had invaded her daughter when it fled her. The girl was too brazen, too bold, and her father allowed it for far longer than she anticipated that he would have. Each day she tested him, wondering what he was waiting for, why his only response was to watch her in unnerving silence. He was toying with her, unbeknownst to her at the time. Letting her push and prod at the boundaries, letting her think that she had a chance before he muzzled and leashed her for good.

The time came, as it inevitably would. He beat her, and again the next day when she spat blood in his face from her re-split lip. His methods to punish her became increasingly extreme, until he came to the realization that only the soul-deep fear of death that is instilled in every living creature would truly break her to his whims. He dragged her from her bed in the night by her hair, kicking and screaming as her mother stumbled after them in the confusion. He drug her all the way out there to the cliffsides sheer drop off, her legs and arms bloody and imbedded with tiny bits of gravel and dirt. Held her by the strands that perfectly matched the shade of his own, dangling her on the edge as she screamed. Cried. Eventually wet herself, and begged. He wrinkled his nose at her, and spat that either her fear would be eradicated, or she would die with it in her heart. 

When he at last threw her into the dirt at her mother’s knees, he promised her that next time she would not have enough hair to be suspended by. And the very next morning, he shore it from her scalp in uneven, rough patches. Her spirit rolled over then, showed him its throat, and she knew that he saw it in her eyes. He left her alone, and later that night her mother snuck into her room to cradle her crying frame, more lucid than the girl had seen her in a long time. “Shh. There isn’t any need for that.”

“I liked it long. Like yours.” 

“Like all else, it will grow again.” 

The girl wanted to tell her mother that not everything could be rekindled. She didn’t know if her soul would ever feel right again, instead of black and quiet and cold. And she didn’t know if the man her father had become, _molded_ as he said by those sinister, mysterious figures higher than he, could ever nurture love or warmth in his heart again.

He was not easy on her despite her fractured will; he was firm as always, unrelenting, though occasionally he offered her praise like a fat old master throwing his scrawny hound a morsel of scraps. The first time he did, it was as she was on her knees sucking in air, trying to regulate her breathing in preparation for the next time he'd duck her under the too-hot water, urging her to beg for compassion. _"Always expect life to treat you without mercy. Why grovel for it?"_  
  
She never did.  
  
The second part of her training, apparently initiated by her ordeal on the cliffs, had begun. If the girl had thought that her circumstances could not possibly worsen, she had been unfortunately wrong. Her father became determined to stamp out a reaction to fear and pain. His mantra, more than likely whispered in his ear from someone above him, haunted her dreams: _”We must learn to tolerate pain, to overcome fear. Only then may we rise above the confines of our mortal flesh, and endure that which we thought we could not.”_

 _What have they done to you?_ The girl would think each time he said it. _What are you doing to me?_

Often her flesh was mottled in the beginning. Eventually her father’s methods moved beyond the brutish when she stopped flinching at his sailing fists, and into more complicated territory. Psychological anguish was much harder to master, near impossible the girl would think sometimes as she lay shivering and curled into a ball. Her mother became a frequent participator in their training at her fathers insistence, the woman becoming an effective way to push the girl’s endurance. She could never stand to hear her mother cry. 

The bruises and swollen, peeling skin subsided, but the girl found herself longing for them in the end. Anything but what her father did to her now, anything to not see the disgusted twist of his lips when he turned away from her, unable to witness her shame when she broke down before him. “Please” was a word that the girl had scrubbed from her vocabulary long ago. It meant nothing in that house.

She endured until she was nearly fourteen, a ghost of the squealing little girl who’d hugged her mother’s legs while her father laughed and chased her with paint-covered fingers. Soon, her father promised, she would show them what she was made of for the first time. Whatever they were smuggling came with an apparent staggeringly high risk of torture if discovered, which her father had presumably attempted to prepare her for. She could not imagine that anything they’d do to her could ever be worse than him.

A month before her birthday, the girl lie awake in her bed, examining her fingers that had healed crookedly at some joints, never given proper time to recover after their repeated fractures. Her door ghosted open silently, silvery beams of moonlight illuminating her mother in the doorway. The woman crept close to her daughter, who sat up in concern at the fevered look in her eyes and the blossoming bruises on her cheeks.

“Don’t say a word,” her mother whispered, drawing her from the warmth of the blankets. Onto her child’s shoulder she looped a bulging bag, before kneeling to begin hurriedly lacing the girl into a pair of boots. She longed to ask her mother what she was doing, but she suspected the answer that stared her so boldly in the face. Her throat was as dry as bone as her mother lead her quietly, so slowly that it was agonizing, through the house. When they reached the back door, the sound of the deadbolt sliding aside sounded as loud as thunder. Out into the moonlight they crept, towards the edge of the cliffs until the girl froze. With pity and pain in her eyes, her mother drew her further along to a set of stairs carved into the mountainside, leading down to a flat plateau. There, the girl saw something that made hope blossom in her for the first time in years: an old X-Wing. 

“Mom?” The girl could scarcely speak; the cockpit was open, a helmeted man seated inside, engine idling.

“There isn’t time. You must go now. He’s still awake – in his study.”

“Mama,” the girl whispered, but even that felt too loud there in the falling snow, like a shout. “Come with me.”

“Sweet girl. There isn’t room.” Her mother smiled, reaching out to smooth her hand over the girl’s lengthening hair. “He’ll come back for me; don’t you worry.”

“If he won’t, I will,” the girl swore, but her mother smiled sadly and shook her head.

“Don’t you ever come back, Ashmire. There’s nothing here for you anymore.”

There was, there was - _her_ \- but then her mother was ushering her forward and the girl had no choice. Her legs were trembling like a newborn Bantha as she approached the X-Wing, and even as the pilot offered her a friendly wave and an explanation that he’d fought alongside her mother so long ago, the girl could scarcely hear him.

All she heard was the whispered promise of freedom as they lifted into the air, and felt a tightening shackle around her heart as she watched her mother’s tiny figure fade into the distance.

☼ ☾ ☼ ☾ ☼

The moment Ash finishes speaking, the weird feeling holding the worst of her agony at bay snaps, and the Child sags in her arms, his little eyes flitting closed. It’s all the confirmation she needs that what she felt earlier was him, and that he’s solely the reason she was able to get through her grim fairytale. But without him, everything comes rushing in and her spine goes rigid at the intensity of it. She barely gets him into his bassinet before she’s slumping back to the floor.

A hand splays between her shoulders, fingers reaching from blade-to-blade. She knows he must feel the heat creeping back into her skin, apparently determined to be fevered. But he doesn’t lecture her now, nor does he mention it at all. Mando just slides one of his hands across her good shoulder and pulls, gently tugging her backwards until she’s seated between his thighs, his arms encircling her, chin on the top of her head. She can’t see any part of him that’s not clothed sitting like this, but it doesn’t matter. She can feel his breath lifting the strands of her hair, can feel his strong, steady heartbeat thumping against her spine, guiding her out of the shadows like a lighthouse.

“There’s nothing I can say that conveys to you how sorry I am,” Mando murmurs. He doesn’t have to say for what – it’s _everything_ that she experienced, everything that she was forced to endure and keep hidden inside of her. “But I think that I have to try. The horrors that were inflicted upon you are…shockingly vile. Horribly evil. How anyone could ever deliberately hurt anyone, hurt _you_ in such a way…” 

She feels a shiver roll through him as he fights for composure, struggling to control whatever rages through him so that he can comfort her.

“I was angry with you. So angry. Because even though I know you didn’t intend it, you put the kid in harm’s way. And yourself, not that you seemed to care about that. Which only infuriated me more. I meant what I said to you in the cave – I can’t help you if you won’t let me. And I want you to _want me_ to help you, more than you know.”

“And what about you, Mando?” She murmurs, unable to stop herself. She’s barely holding herself together but she feels strangely emboldened by the feeling of him holding onto her so tightly. “When do you let someone help you?”

“We’re not talking about me right now,” he says dismissively, and at her sigh he amends, “But we can. Later. Now, you need bacta and bed. And then tomorrow, we’ll finish this conversation. You’ll tell me what you’re comfortable telling me about your father – only what you think will help on Hoth – and we’ll get that settled. You take your time thinking about what you want me to do when I find him, because the puck doesn’t specify dead or alive. We’ll take down Moff Gideon. And then we’ll do what we can to find your mother. I’m just sorry that it will have to be the last priority.”

Her eyes fly open at that, and if she could, she’d turn to make sure that he isn’t bluffing. That there isn’t some hidden smirk on his face, taunting her. But no – he wouldn’t do that to her. Not after…everything. “I don’t even know if she’s still alive, Mando.”

“All the more reason to start looking.” He rises behind her, his arms looping under hers to lift her effortlessly to her feet. She practically sags in his grasp, exhaustion overwhelming her, a direct impact of everything that she allowed to escape from her at last. When he tucks her into her bed, she keeps her eyes closed when she reaches for him, fingers brushing along his lingering palm before he completely draws away. She knows that tomorrow they’ll have to have another heavy conversation, but for now, Ash drifts off with the knowledge that he does not seem inclined to leave her in Ardwell fresh on her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> p.s. y'all are in for a treat next chapter


	15. The Guardian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think that was an adequate amount of time to let my brain rest – I joke, I joke. So sorry for the wait. I wanted to get this one out much earlier and in fact had it half-written two days after my last update, but then my life decided to get a little hectic. I really wanted to give this chapter the attention it deserved, so I decided to just wait until I could do that, even if that meant you guys were about ready to strangle me by the time I did! But you’ll see why I was so particular about this one. 
> 
> Back to it! :D

_Look at where you are_  
_Look at where you started_  
_The fact that you’re alive is a miracle_  
_Just stay alive; that would be enough_

Din lies awake long after Ash has fallen into a restless slumber, simply listening to her breathe.

He knows that he can't test his resolve and go to her, even when she begins to toss and turn. He clenches his fists over his chest, squeezes his eyes shut, and pretends that he can’t hear the distressed murmurs slipping through her lips. He doesn’t know what the hell the kid did, but he’s out cold, and of no help to her now. Din’s the only one awake – and presumably two Tauntauns downstairs that he’ll have to check on, because he’s certainly not leaving that task up to Ash right now. 

She’d been far too warm when he’d peeled the blankets away from her to carefully smear bacta on her flushed skin. Though he would have preferred to do it when she was awake, she’d tanked quickly and he’d been left trying not to think too closely about his calloused fingers rubbing the cool, slightly stinging ointment onto her delicate skin. 

It haunts him, the memories of that fleeting moment – just like all of the others. The glee in her expression whenever he would patiently indulge her brattiness, simply to see her joy upon thinking she’d baited him into a response. The little smirk that tugged at her lips when he’d slip up and say something a tad too suggestive. The way the furrows in her forehead had smoothed the moment he’d arrived, breathless and panicked, when she’d been trapped with Tyrlan and the insufferable Jawa.

He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Kuiil that day, and what he’d do if he had to listen to her die over the comms before he ever got to her. He didn’t know when he’d become so inexplicably fond of the girl, but she’d morphed from a shifty thief to a warm and comforting presence on the Crest, a beloved favorite of his son’s. A woman, with curves and a coy smile that even he couldn’t help but to be swayed by. She got her way with him far too often, and she knew it. So did he – and yet still allowed it. 

Once he might have thought it weakness – thought _her_ a weakness, one that he could not indulge. He would have left her behind the instant he’d thought so if it meant propelling him forward in search of closure for the kid. But that had been before. When had it changed? Could he pinpoint the exact moment? His thoughts tilted and spun like a careening ship, spools of precious memory unfurling like bolts of extravagant silk. The first time he’d let her fly the Crest, when she’d been so preoccupied with her task that she hadn’t noticed him watching her, hadn’t noticed the tremor in his hands when her mouth had stretched into a wide, joyful grin? Or maybe it had been when he’d stumbled upon her rocking a hiccupping Child back to sleep in the early dawn, humming a gentle melody under her breath and shushing him until he quieted. 

A hundred tiny moments – he flits through as many as he can remember, trying to pinpoint just one, until Din realizes that he’s thinking of it all wrong. It isn’t one moment that changed everything, that left him feeling like he’d taken a step out of the shadows and found himself in a world too big, too foreign. It’s _all_ of them, building on each other, interwoven so tightly that even his deft fingers can’t pick them apart.

Guarding the doors to public bathhouses while he washed, insisting that he indulge in _”a real hot bath, not that shit shower on the Crest”_. Bringing him plates of food when he was too busy charting a course, noticing that he hadn’t eaten in hours even when Din hadn’t. The flush on her cheeks as she finished another mug of sweetwine, light-hearted taunts falling like favors from her lips. 

The gentle vibration in his helmet when she’d pressed her forehead against the smooth metal, not knowing what that meant to his people. A kiss. The closest he could ever come, no matter how often his gaze found itself drawn to Ash’s full lips. How satisfying it would be to steal that devious little smirk from them with his own, to see the surprise in her big, dark eyes…

He shifts, blankets rustling beneath him as he tries to halt his incredibly dangerous line of thinking. He agonizes enough as it is over the knowledge that his own son will never see his face; to entertain factoring Ashmire into the equation seems like welcoming bittersweet torture with open arms. Shoulders hunching, he pushes himself up and runs both hands through his hair, leaving it wild and untamed. It’s longer than he’s ever allowed it to get, curling around his ears and brushing low across his forehead, but he hasn’t bothered hacking it off yet. He tells himself that it has absolutely nothing to do with a particular dream of his involving Ash’s fingers fisting in the strands.

He knows it’s impossible. But he still hasn’t cut it.

Trying to suppress a groan of frustration, Din rises on sock-clad feet and lifts his helmet, settling it onto his shoulders. The shadows pooling in the corners of the room flee, the cozy loft taking on infrared shades of greens and blues, interrupted only by three blazing red lifeforms, all slumbering soundly. While Sansil and the Child’s vitals are normal, even and entirely uninterrupted, Ash’s are not. Her heart rate too high, her temperature rising – it’s not unusual for her sleep to be so restless and haunted. As quietly as he can, Din buckles himself into his armor and pushes through the sheet separating them. She doesn’t stir as he approaches her bed, strands of long silky hair sticking to her damp neck and spilling across her crooked pillow. She’s tangled up in the blankets, a little wrinkle formed between her eyebrows as she dreams. 

His gloves are in his grasp, the last pieces of his ensemble, but he doesn’t tug them on. He fists both of them in his left hand, and with his right he reaches out to gently, so gently, ease Ash’s hair away from her flushed skin. She’s out too deeply to notice, so he takes the liberty of carefully freeing her from her cocoon, peeling away one of the heavier blankets and leaving her nestled beneath several layers of thick sheets. The pads of his fingertips feel like they’re throbbing where he touched her; he forces himself to step back, to pull on his gloves and turn away from her, to leave the room hiding a scowl beneath his helmet. He’s acting like a lovesick whelp, like many of the young boys of the Corps during their twelfth summers, when suddenly they found the lilt of the girl’s voices appealing and the shapes of them, sometimes difficult to hide even beneath armor, downright irresistible. Green as grass.

The Tauntauns are already awake when he reaches the landing, snorting and squinting against the light as he nudges the light of the lanterns higher. There’s nothing amiss with them, food and water troughs full, nothing moving outside; to be sure, Din nudges the doors of the barn open and steps out into the snow, glancing around the stillness of the night. There's nothing stalking the beasts from the shadow that his tech can detect; Ardwell is silent. Satisfied, he turns and stalks back into the barn, settling himself on a bale of hay. It’s much chillier on the ground floor, the Tauntauns thick hides allowing the sole heater to run low. Tendrils of cold creep through the padding of his armor, just enough to make a light smattering of goosebumps rise on his arms. It feels easier to think down here, with moonlight streaming in through the wooden planks and the Tauntauns grunting softly to each other. 

As he knew it would, as it has since the moment she uttered it aloud, Ash’s story flashes through Din’s mind. The knowledge of what he soon must do looms before him, inevitable. His furious heart whispers that the only acceptable outcome to Hoth is walking away with his hands coated in the blood of a monster. 

_That’s not true._

As much as Din wants to watch the life bleed out of her father’s eyes, he gave Ash a very clear choice. One that only she can make, and one that he will heed, no matter how hard he clenches his teeth at the idea of allowing the man to keep breathing. But regardless of whether he's taken dead or alive, Din will go to Hoth the moment that the Crest can make it. He will put an end to the terror that Ash has endured.

His fingers go to one of his pockets, sweeping his cloak aside to fish something from within. They close around a round, smooth object that fits neatly into the palm of his clenched fist, trembling just slightly. When his glove unfurls, he stares down at the holopuck balanced there for several long breaths before he thumbs the tiny button on the side.

It flickers to life and for perhaps the hundredth time that night, Din studies the face staring resolutely back at him.

The colors of the flickering hologram do reality no favors, but Din can imagine it just fine all the same. He’s older, perhaps in his late fifties, his hair thinning but swept neatly back away from his face. Certainly not dark – he imagines that the shade of Ash’s hair must be a mimicry of her father’s, though age will certainly have leant the man more silver. His features are unremarkable in the general sense; a prominent but straight nose, thin lips that are pressed too tightly together, a wide brow and close-cropped stubble lining his sharp cheeks. 

It’s his eyes that snag Din’s attention though, holding him like a rabbit in a snare. Small, set beneath brows that tend to arch downwards in slight displeasure. Squinting, calculating, cold. He stares back at Din unknowingly, and yet still the Mandalorian feels as if the man is taking measure of him. Finding him lacking. 

He tears his gaze away at last to trace the name that shines like a damning beacon above the man’s bust: Anders Najaro. 

He lingers on it like a hound with a bone, and only when Dash’s snort drags him out of his stupor does Din continue reading, drinking in the information that he knows is already burned into his memory.

 **NAME:** _NAJARO, ANDERS_  
**CRIMES:** _SMUGGLING SCHEDULE III RESTRICTED CONTRABAND, PARTICIPANT IN ORGANIZED CRIME, CONSPIRACY_  
**JURISDICTION:** _GALACTIC_  
**CONDITIONS:** _NONE SPECIFIED_  
**REWARD:** _₹75,000_

__Whoever wants Anders Najaro removed from the picture wants it fiercely; the credit amount alone is nothing to sneeze at. But the _who_ is what gives Din pause. The Empire, weeding out a prominent member of the Rebellion? Din can’t imagine that a man like he would be welcomed by those rallying for freedom. An Imperial gone rogue? A possibility, though it would be odd to find his charges lacking Treason. Someone from Ash’s fallen guild, hellbent on revenge? _ _

__Perhaps the who isn’t important; Din shifts on the bale of hay, ignoring the bits that poke through the fabric of his trousers, irritating his skin. Who Ash’s father works _for_ seems the more looming threat, a great unknown variable that could prove lethal. _ _

__Who’s gameboard will Din be tampering with when he removes Anders from play?_ _

__He straightens abruptly as the door to the barn opens, tucking the puck away as a flurry of snow blows in on the frigid wind. Pavan steps inside, moonlight thrown across his fur-clad back as he pauses to regard Din where he sits. Shutting the door behind him and stamping snow from his boots, Pavan lifts his hands to toss his hood back before bobbing his head in the Mandalorian’s direction._ _

__“You could’ve saved yourself the trouble,” Din says, his voice raspy from disuse and scarcely restrained frustration. The modulator barely shifts in cadence, and Pavan seems not to notice. _Ash would’ve._ “We haven’t missed a night.”_ _

__“I didn’t think that you had,” Pavan replies, back momentarily turned to Din as he begins to stroke the Tauntaun’s necks. “Neither of you look the type to shirk responsibility. But I’m an old man with old bones that don’t like to rest, and I find the company of the Tauntauns comforting at times.”_ _

__“I’ll give you your privacy, then.” Din begins to rise, but Pavan turns and holds up a hand to halt him. For a moment, he contemplates leaving anyways. The angle of the moonlight upon Pavan’s entrance promised that it would depart soon, and it never took Ash or the kid long to wake up after dawn rose. But the man has been more than generous to them, and Din can’t bring himself to appear ungrateful. So he sits back down, watching as Pavan leans back against one of the stalls to regard him._ _

__“How is Ash? I’d heard that her fever was being a bit stubborn.”_ _

__It is; it worries him. She’d been a slip of a girl when they’d met in Mos Eisley, too thin and wary like a wild creature. She’s certainly filled out in her time with him on the Crest, a healthy glow in her cheeks and a softness to her curves that hadn’t been as prevalent before. Still, he knows how malnutrition stunts the body, how her system is likely overwhelmed with handling injury and sickness so shortly after beginning to recuperate._ _

__“Better. A bit.” Din frowns, glad that the man cannot pick up on his uncomfortable expression. “The cold isn’t good for her. I hope you don’t consider me unappreciative, but…”_ _

__“But you need to get her away from Nilphis. I take no offense to it. It certainly isn’t for everyone.” Pavan pauses, and something careful settles on his expression, flickering behind his eyes. Din sharpens immediately, searching his face hungrily for a clue of what lingers in his mind. He doesn’t have to wonder for long. “She intends to leave with you, then?”_ _

__“Why wouldn’t she?” The base of his skull throbs._ _

__“I meant no offense. It’s only…” It’s the first time Din has ever seen Pavan flustered, a frown pulling at his lips and one of his hands hovering uncertainly. “Nima spoke with me about the prospect of Ash staying in Ardwell. I believe there was a conversation where the idea was mentioned, though Nima did stress that she thought the possibility slim.”_ _

__Din feels the skin of his face warm as a hot rush of shame floods him. It had to have been yesterday, when she’d made herself so scarce after their fallout in the barn. The things he’d said to her, the anger that he had allowed to fuel his furious mouth…of course she had thought he’d want to leave her. In truth, he had considered it at the pinnacle of his rage – but the cold flush of dread that had poured through him at the very idea of never seeing her face again, not knowing if she was safe, had immediately made him dismiss the idea._ _

__She hadn’t known that, though. She’d considered the possibility seriously enough to cement a backup plan, a life on Ardwell._ _

__He’s on his feet before he can think twice, rolling his shoulders to ease the strain from them. “I appreciate more than I can say that you would be willing to give her a home here if she needed one. But I don’t think that will be necessary.”_ _

__Pavan nods, and this time there is no frown worrying his features. Instead, Din swears that he fights not to smile as he says, “Understood. Until next time, then.”_ _

__Ash is already awake when he steps back into the room, a little earlier than he’d anticipated. Her hair is piled messily on her head, and she’s alternating a mug of broth between her mouth and the kid’s, who’s little eyes are squinted half-shut. She tilts her head back and looks up at him, and the look on her face stops him in his tracks. She looks…soft. Not quite happy, but more at ease than he’d seen her in some time. As if finally opening up to someone, finally revealing the horrors she’d carried so heavily on her shoulders had allowed her to rest, briefly._ _

__He knows the day will be long. They have a heavy conversation ahead of them, decisions to be made, an engine to finish replacing, a fever to fight. And the day after it will be just as draining, just as difficult. Just as worth it, if only to see that look on her face more often._ _

__“Good-morning,” she murmurs. “I thought you’d already left for the day.”_ _

__“No,” he tells her, finally stepping out of the doorway. Towards her, the Child, the fat sleepy Loth-cat beneath her chair. Towards his family. “I wouldn’t leave you.”_ _

__She smiles, that devious little pull at the corner of one lip which promises deviancy. “You’d better not. I don’t care what you say, I’m getting in on that engine action today.”_ _

__Din doesn’t bother telling her that isn’t what he meant. He’ll show her instead._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.s. for those of you who tuned in early and saw the massacre I made of Anders naming situation, SORRY. This dude went through like 4 name changes and I tried to catch them all lol. 
> 
> I also had to change the surname because I totally forgot Navarro is an actual place in Star Wars universe. Lord help me.
> 
> Over the next few days I’ll be going back through this fic and crediting all of the song lyrics I used in the beginning of the chapters. I’ll be doing this on all my fics so it might take a bit to get them done, but I figured I should! That way I’m giving credit and you guys can easily find songs if you’re interested in listening. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always very much appreciated; you can find me to chat at n-ulll.tumblr.com <3


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